PS 
1^41 I5l 



IN THE SCHOOLS 



THER ESSAYS 








P/ . ^^ 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Chap CopynglitVo 

Shelt.R4-l I 5 F 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



¥ m PRIZE-FIGHTING 
IN THE SCHOOLS, ^ m 



BY 

W. L. C. HUNNICUTT, D.D. 



Fii/y to express a worlhy tlioui^lit is to j^ivi- it winffs and s,in{ it 
forth, preassurt'd of welcome and appreciation in ex'cry mind. 



Nashvillk, Tp:xn.: 

Publishing House M. E. Church, South. 

Barbkk & Smith, Agents. 

1898. 



p 



1 4-//^" r 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1898, 

By W. L. C. Httnnicutt, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



2no COPY, 
1898. 




TWO COPIES RECFIVFO. 






\\ - 



PREFACE. 

In offering this book to the reading })ii])lic the au- 
thor hopes to help some, especially the young, to better 
thinking and wiser action in connection with the sul)- 
jects herein discussed. 

He does not claim to be a poet, but ventures to in- 
tersperse tlie essays with verses with a view to vary- 
ing (he hoi)es not unpleasantly) the contents of the 
book. 

He asks for the thoughts herein presented only that 
consideration which an earnest in<|uirer' after truth 
should expect from those actuated by the same motive. 

Believing that these essays will at least provoke, if 
they do not impart, some valuable thoughts on their 
several themes, the author sends them forth to the 
kindly reader. W. L. C. U. 

Glostor, .Miss., November 17, 18!i7. 



CONTENTS. 

rA(5E 

Pkize-Figiiting in the Schools 7 

IVjem: Fill Your Own PUuv, or Moral;^ in liliyiiie. 35 

Freedom, Himan and 1 )i\ ink 37 

Poem: The Kill <>2 

Mrs. Susannah Wesi.ky ()5 

Poems: I Wonder What Were ChiMron >hide for. 103 

Children In\ ited 104 

Appeal to C'liildn-n 105 

The Study of the New Testament in (tkeek lOG 

Poems: The Soul's Prayer 122 

We Miss Our Father Everywhere 123 

Noise as a Bkain-Developer 125 

Poems: The Weather and 1 137 

Satire on Unhelief 130 

The Former Days and Thi-xe 142 

Poem: If We Knew Fach Other lietter 170 

Money 181 

Poem: Autumn 204 



PEIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 

If a gladiatorial show, after the ancient 
Eoman style, were proposed in a Christian 
nation at the present day, the public taste 
would be offended and the public conscience 
shocked. Were a Christian community in- 
vited to attend a walking-match, a pugilistic 
combat, or a bull-fight, the majority would 
turn indignantly away from such cruel and 
debasing pastimes. Yet, while we scorn the 
grosser forms of vice, we may be deceived by 
its more refined displays. Are we not con- 
stantly witnessing in the daily conduct of the 
schools, in England and in America, espe- 
cially at the great exhibitions and commence- 
ments, the bloodless slaughter of thousands 
of unoffending spirits, in a manner scarcely 
more excusable than was the butchery of men 
and beasts to make a Roman holiday? Cruel- 
ties are inflicted not upon beasts, but upon 
the tender feelings of youths and little chil- 



8 . PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 

dren. The principles and methods by wliich 
a few are taught in all the schools to rejoice 
in triumphing over their companions will, 
upon examination, be found to harmonize 
rather with the practise of heathen and ruf- 
fians than with the spirit of Christian civiliza- 
tion. 

On the occasion of the installation of Dean 
Stanley, a few years since, as Chancellor of 
St. Andrews University, in England, that dis- 
tinguished Churchman and popular divine 
quoted as embodying the spirit of his remarks 
at that important hour the time-honored 
motto of the university, which is, when trans- 
lated, " To aim at highest honors and surpass 
my comrades all." This motto is here intro- 
duced because it so aptly expresses the pre- 
dominant sentiment of all the schools. It im- 
plies, when analyzed, that honor is the chief 
object of, at least, all scholastic endeavor, and 
that the best method of obtaining it, as well 
as the proper criterion of deserving it, is the 
surpassing of others. 

Are the young to be taught that honor is 



TRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 9 

the essential good, the ambrosia of the soul, 
the strength and delight of its highest life? 
Is it the divinely appointed solace of unsatis- 
fied spirits? If honor signify simply the love 
and esteem of our fellow men, then may it be 
an object of innocent desire; but what means 
the word "highest," with which it is here as- 
sociated? Do not "highest honors" for one 
imply lower and lowest for all others? AVhen- 
ever higher things for some necessitate and 
depend upon lower things for others, the 
higher should be foregone. We may not 
make a pleasure of others' woes. That the 
essence of this motto is not misjudged to con- 
sist in a desire to exalt self in preference to 
others is shown by its latter half, which de- 
clares the aim to be "to surpass my com- 
rades all." But why should one desire to 
surpass another? Is there essential good in 
excelling another? Can a generous spirit re- 
joice in the mortification or defeat of its fel- 
low? Is one the better for making another 
appear worse than himself? If it be replied 
that the object is not to distress another by 



10 PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 

defeat, but to promote personal merit, which 
may be estimated by comparison, the answer 
is ready. First, that our fellow-men have 
never been declared by any competent au- 
thority to be criteritms of excellence in us. 
The great apostle Paul thought those "meas- 
uring themselves by themselves, and compar- 
ing themselves among themselves, are not 
wise." Secondly, the very pith of the senti- 
ment seems to be in the joy which one is to 
experience in excelling others. The spirit of 
this motto is not to be distinguished from 
that which exults in victory on the field of 
battle, and most exults when most of treasure 
is captured and most of life destroyed; and 
being thus engendered and fostered in the 
young, has done more to fill the world with 
envious rivalries, cruel hates, and deadly 
strifes than perhaps any other unrecognized 
child of Satan. Can he who loves his neigh- 
bor as himself wilfully defeat him in a con- 
test, and then rejoice more at his own success 
than he grieves for his neighbor's defeat? 
Yet, almost universally in the schools, the 



PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 11 

surpassing of others is made the chief evi- 
dence of merit and the sole ground of reward. 
It begins with the "turning down" and 
"standing head" of the infant class, and 
closes with the gold medal or the first honor 
at the end of the scholastic career. If those 
thus taught and accustomed to derive happi- 
ness from the misfortunes or the faults of 
others ever learn the charity and the self- 
sacrificing devotion to the good of others 
which characterize a noble nature, they mast 
do so in spite of these teachings of their 
youth. 

Ill support of these views let us examine 
the most popular method of inciting to dil- 
igence and promoting scholarship in the 
schools. That method is, almost everywhere, 
a system of what may be termed exclusive 
prizes. A system of prizes is exclusive when 
the number of prizes is less than the number 
of competitors. In every such case some are 
mathematically doomed to failure. Only so 
many of the whole number can obtain a 
prize, and success depends solely upon excel- 



12 PEIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 

ling others. The result is, not that one suc- 
ceeds and others fail, which might be the 
case were a prize in reach of all, but, one suc- 
ceeds beat use others fail. To obtain the prize, 
one need not be worthy or faithful, but sim- 
ply superior to others. Superiority alone 
takes the prize. But is superiority ever a 
proper criterion of merit, or a just ground of 
reward, save where it is attained by more 
faithful endeavors? 

Consider the case where three prizes are 
offered to a hundred students. All may 
strive, but ninety-seven must be disappointeil, 
How shall we balance the rejoicing of the few 
against the disappointment of the many? 
Yet this is the inevitable result of an unnec- 
essary device which engenders and rewards a 
selfish ambition. If the object be to promote 
general diligence in study, this plan must 
signally fail; since perhaps a majority would 
deliberately relax their efforts, and but few 
make any positive exertion to obtain a prize 
where the chances are ninety-seven to three 
against them, and where success, with at least 



PBIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 13 

seven out of ten, would be a moral impossi- 
bility. The effect of this plan upon many is 
the reverse of that which is intended, lead- 
ing them to study less, in order to avoid the 
mortification of apparent defeat in a contest 
thus unfairly thrust upon them. 

If it be intended only to promote excellence 
and reward high merit in a few, then may the 
wisdom of the end, as well as the justice of the 
means, be seriously questioned. Is it wise or 
just to aim at the high development of a few 
tlirough the neglect or detriment of the many? 
Are not higher attainments for all rather to 
be desired than the highest culture for a few? 
If learning, like money, shows a natural tend- 
ency to accumulate as the possession of the 
few, shall a system of education, professedly 
designed for all, be operated so as chietly to 
benefit thn more intellectual? Those who are 
aptest to make high attainments need least 
stimulant to exertion. The dull boy must 
strive, if he strive at all, against inevitable 
fate. Any plan which rewards only the high- 
est excellence must forever fail to reach the 



14 PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 

mediocre multitude who most need to be 
aroused to exertion. If it be said that the ap- 
proval of friends and the consciousness of 
mental improvement are sufficient for the 
many, while additional premiums are given to 
the few who excel, it may be answered that 
the supposition that the few who gain the 
prizes are really any more worthy of reward 
than others is often wholly without founda- 
tion. 

Indeed, the system of prizes is perhaps more 
at fault in its moral equities than in its prac- 
tical results. Any system which rewards mere 
excellence, without regard to the circumstan- 
ces under which it is attained, must be lacking 
in moral propriety. Naturally the prizes will 
go to those of superior native intellect, or to 
those having enjoyed other advantages which 
imply no merit in the possessor. Ancestry 
for generations back, conversations heard or 
questions asked around the family fireside in 
childhood, a good teacher in early life, a dozen- 
or a hundred incalculable influences, may com- 
bine to decide who shall take the prize on a 



nilZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 35 

great commencement day. Yet none of these 
are personal merits of the student. As well re- 
ward the boy whose father is richest, or whose 
mother is prettiest, as to assign premiums to 
those only who know most. Nothing can be a 
just ground of reward or punishment except 
voluntary conduct. Now, if the relative intel- 
lectual capacities and attainments of the sev- 
eral contestants could be ascertained, and due 
allowance could be made for all natural ine- 
qualities and circumstantial advantages, at the 
outset; and if at the end it could be seen just 
how much advancement each had made, then 
some approach toward justice in the assign- 
ment of rewards might be attained. Other- 
wise, the crowning of the highest can not be 
more just when intellectual attainment is made 
the standard of judgment than if physical 
height was made the criterion of merit. He 
who begins witli two talents and ends witli 
four is more meritorious than he who begins 
with five and ends with eight; yet according to 
the system which judges solely by final results, 
the latter would carry off the palm. All lauat 



16 PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 

admit that, unless the competitors are equal at 
the outset, no just estimate of exertion or prog- 
ress can be made by applying a common stand- 
ard at the end of the contest. One of supe- 
rior mind may with little exertion outstrip an- 
otlier of inferior powers, though he exert them 
to the utmost. Are the bestowments of heav- 
en and the gifts of fortune to be made the 
grounds of disparaging comparisons and odi- 
ous discriminations among those who should 
be taught to love as brethren? 

Besides all this, the offering of prizes, which 
a number are led to desire, and often expect, 
but which only a few can obtain, leads not only 
to disappointment to many, but to a suspicion 
of unfairness or fraud on the part of the pro- 
poser of the prizes or of the judges of the 
contest. Who ever heard of a distribution of 
honors or prizes which gave satisfaction to the 
students or to their friends? Those who strive 
for the prizes can not be made to understand 
why honest toil should not be crowned with its 
merited and expected reward. Nor should they 
be satisfied; for none should ever be led to d.e-. 



PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 17 

sire, much less to expect, that which they can 
not obtain. This whole plan of measuring stu- 
dents by their fellows is erroneous and harm- 
ful in high degree. It has fostered discontent, 
jealousy, envy, and even malicious hatred 
among the young, who have, to their sorrow, 
found these evil passions growing stronger in 
later years. While it has highly honored and 
sometimes overstimulated a few, it has morti- 
fied the spirits and weakened the energies of 
thousands who most needed quickening and 
encouragement. Often the body of the stu- 
dents seem chiefly used ms foils to set ofi" the 
shining qunlities of a few whom nature or ac- 
cident has made the smartest scholars in 
school. But to use the mediocre multitude 
only as stepping-stones to honor for a few bril- 
liant intellects must ever be as unfortunate in 
result as it is unjust in principle. 

This subject is of sufficient pi actical and eth- 
ical importance to justify some inquiry as to 
the opinions of the ancients concerning it. 

Homer, the faithful mirror of the Grecian 
soul, represents Achilles as instituting various 



18 PKIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 

contests during the festivities which were ob- 
served in honor of his departed friend Patro- 
clus. On these interesting occasions the num- 
ber of prizes and the number of competitors 
are invariably the same. The rewards are never 
too few for every honest aspirant to receive 
some token of appreciation from the distribu- 
tor of prizes. If five ambitiously contend in 
the chariot-race, five separate rewards must be 
theirs at the end. If two engage in a boxing- 
match, the victor of course claims the first 
prize; yet sympathizing friends could not see 
the vanquished depart without some consola- 
tory proof of their appreciation of the manly 
part he bore in the contest. They reckoned, 
not without reason, that fate had decreed that 
one or the other should be defeated, but felt 
that failure in such a case was far from being 
a proof of inferior merit. 

So, too, in wrestling, in foot-racing, in fen- 
cing, and in contests in archery; no more 
competitors were said to enter the lists than the 
number of premiums offered. The rule was va- 
ried from only in the single instance in which 



PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 19 

a huge mass of iron became the property of 
him who could throw it farthest, which excep- 
tion rather confirms than violattfs tlie rule; 
since the mass doubtless had many successive 
owners, and was valued only as a means of 
testing the strength of any who might be dis- 
posed to heave it. 

That tliose high-souled Greeks, though hea- 
then, were not destitute of the capacity, nor 
wanting in the disi)osition, practically to en- 
force the nicest moral distinctions is so beau- 
tifully illustrated in the case of two who dis- 
pi^ted for the prize at the close of a chariot- 
race, that the passage deserves to be quoted. 
One, it appears, had, in a narrow pass, pressed 
his chariot-wheels against tlK)se of his compet- 
itor, and, by means which seemed not fair, had 
rushed into tlie way ahead of his rivah Was 
he, though victor in fact, entitled to the pre- 
ferred prize? After some discussion, the one 
who thought himself wronged thus appealed 
to his opponent: 

What Greek sball l)l;nne me, if I bid tliee rise, 
And rindicate, by oath, th' ill-gotten prize? 



20 PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 

Rise, if thou dar'st, before thy chariot stand, 
The driving scourge high lifted in thy hand; 
And toiicli thy steeds, and swear, thy whole intent 
Was l)ut to conquer, not to circumvent: 
Swear by that God whose liquid arms surround 
The globe, and whose dread eartlujuakes heave the 
ground. 

These direct aud solemn words evoked a con- 
scientious response; the wrong-doer confessed 
his wrong and freely yielded the prize he had 
unfairly won. 

Though Yirgil may have imitated Homer in 
many things pertaining to the style and struc- 
ture of a heroic poem, yet we may not suppose 
him to misrepresent the moral sentiments of 
the age in which he lived. He describes ^ne- 
as as conducting certain games in honor of his 
father's memory on the anniversary of his de- 
parture to the land of spirits. On this grand 
occasion, the contestants in the ship-race, the 
foot-race, the boxing-match, and in shooting 
at the flying pigeon, " to the mast's high pin- 
nacle confined," received, each one, whether 
many or few were engaged, a suitable reward. 
As he invites the eager multitude to enter the 



PllIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 21 

foot-race, hear him magnanimously exclaim: 
"Not one of you this day shall leave the field 
without his due reward!"" Such kind and 
considerate regard for the feelings of all who 
should honestly enter the race is in strange 
contrast with the cold and heartless literary 
contests of modern times. Those heathen 
could not bear to see a single one who had 
honestly striven go unrewarded away; but 
Christians, in this day, can witness with de- 
light the mortifying disappointment of a hun- 
dred sensitive spirits, if one may exult in the 
selfish possession of a prize. AVe wonder that 
they should have enjoyed the gladiatorial 
shows, where men with beasts contended, but 
we delight to witness competitive examinations, 
prize declamations, and all that round of cru- 
cial conflict, in which the children and youth 
of our land are trained to appear, for the pub- 
lic delectation, at least once a year. What if 
feelings are publicly wounded, hopes disap- 
pointed, aspirations nipped in the bud, and 
sweet expectations drowned in the applause of 

* Nemo ex hoc numero mihi non donatus abibit. 
(".Eneid," Book V., v. 305.) 



22 PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 

the victor's merits? We have discovered the 
best; we laud and reward them, and what care 
we for the rest? The obedient herd are brought 
before the multitude to be crowned or crushed, 
and joy stands tiptoe when strong ambition 
drags feebler merit in triumphal disi)lay be- 
fore the public gaze. Is not the pojjular ma- 
nia for intercollegiate contests in baseball and 
football the legitimate outcome of such meth- 
ods of teaching? A player's life, crushed or 
kicked out in the reckless and ruthless strife 
upon the field, is not a too costly, nor (shame 
to tell!) a very uncommon, price to pay for 
the empty privilege of huzzaing for the victo- 
rious team. One vitiating principle of con- 
duct inculcated in youth may be expected to 
corrupt and poison all the motive forces of the 
entire after-life. 

It is readily admitted that it is much easier 
to discover errors than to correct them, to 
point out the faults in a system than to show 
a more excellent way. I suggest that no re- 
wards be offered to students but such as it is 
both mathematically and morally possible for 



PKIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 23 

all to obtain. The dull aud the idle need most 
to be quickeued and energized, yet these are 
apt to be affected not at all, or only injurious- 
ly, by exclusive premiums. That a few bril- 
liant aud ambitious minds should exhibit on 
special occasions the most admirable results 
of diligence and high culture is a far less im- 
portant achievement in the great cause of ed- 
ucation than that hundreds of mediocre and 
unaspiring souls should be raised to a high- 
er, though not the highest, level, and be 
made to feel that the worUl recognizes in them 
mental and moral powers as appreciable and 
as indispens.ible to the welfare of our race as 
any possessed l)y those who are regai-dcd as 
most gifted of mortals. The plan of specially 
honoring exclusively the best must forever re- 
press the humble aspirations of the conscious- 
ly inferior mind. It must, too, forever remain 
chargeable with injustice, unless it can be 
shown that the inferiority is in each case the 
f((Klt of its subject. Doubtless the Omniscient 
Eye as much approves tlie faithful use of 
humble powers as the achievements of the 



24 PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 

mightiest minds. The gifts are God's, and 
those who use them, too, and he who uses best 
his gift is worthiest. A true mother bestows 
most care and appreciation on the least gifted 
of her children. Nor should those wdio are 
training souls for immortality base their plans 
upon any other principle. To ignore the 
truth that low attainments may be as worthy 
of rew^ard as high ones is, in many instances, 
to injure the innocent and Avrong those who 
are without defense. 

This plan of measuring every man by others 
tends to engender a heartless and insatiable 
ambition, which only feeds upon victory, not 
over himself, but over one's neighbor. The 
youth who has spent his school-days in the 
atmosphere of such teaching enters manhood 
with the idea that he must surpass somebody 
or be nobody. Hence, among men of all trades, 
professions, and callings, jealousies, envies, and 
bitter animosities are but the legitimate fruit 
of early training. The ambitious soldier ruth- 
lessly destroys the lives of others; the ambi- 
tious student unwittingly destroys his own. 



PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 25 

Even into the sacred desk this unhallowed 
passion has crept, and the minister of the gos- 
pel, half unconscious of its sway, has over- 
tasked his powers, not to save son Is, but to 
gain reputation or surpass others; and by slow" 
but surely suicidal steps offers himself an un- 
timely sacrifice on the altar of ambition. In- 
deed, whenever and wherever an unholy am- 
bition has destroyed the peace of individuals 
or families, broken the harmony of communi- 
ties, or overthrown the liberties of nations, 
there may be seen the ripened fruits of this 
pitting policy of the schoolroom. 

The negative results of ambition, though 
not so striking, are often as real, and possibly 
as abundant, as its positive effects. Though 
it drives one to do and dare, it suspends anoth- 
er's energies entirely. He will move neither 
hand nor foot nor tongue in any good cause 
if he see not a prospect of excelling another 
or of outdoing and triumphing over his neigh- 
bor. If he can not do some great thing, he 
will do nothing. The foot says: " Because I am 
not the hand, I am not of the body." Mortified 



26 PKIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 

pride schism atically abandons its place, be- 
cause it is thought not to be sufficiently high. 
The ear pines in discontent, because it is not 
the eye. It was the man of one talent who, 
half in envy, half in spite, and all in proud 
contempt of the meagerness of his gift, hid his 
lord's money in the earth. 

As the Scriptures furnish confessedly the 
only perfect standard of morals, let light be 
sought from them on this vital question. 
Does the Bible in any place teach that one 
man should strive to excel another; or make 
one man's conduct or attainments the standard 
by which others are to be judged? Can the 
idea of rewarding one for excelling another be 
found in the Book? Did the great Teacher 
ever utter a word to suggest or encourage 
strife for preeminence among his followers? 
Does any New Testament writer hint such a 
doctrine? The apostle Paul was driven into 
boasting by the influence of certain false teach- 
ers. Yet where else can such a piece of sar- 
casm be found as that in which he defends 
his folly, declaring that he "speaks not after 



PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 27 

the Lord, but as it were foolishly; " not from 
choice, but because they had compelled him. 
For their sakes, though to his own disgust, he 
parades his unparalleled sufferings and pro- 
claims his "visions and revelations of the 
Lord," avowing, nevertheless, that he was a 
fool in thus glorying, and that, though in noth- 
ing was he behind the very chiefest apostles, 
yet was he nothing. The spirit of Biblical 
teaching is, everywhere, that we are not to 
seek our own good in preference to another's. 
We are to love our neighbor as ourselves; and 
to " look not every man on his own things, but 
also on the things of others." "In honor," we 
are exhorted " to prefer one another." How 
unanswerable is the Saviour's question, "How 
can ye believe, which receive honor one of an- 
other, and seek not the honor that cometh 
from God only ? " All the life of Jesus Christ 
on earth was a sacrifice of himself for the good 
of others; but in order to make us realize the 
power of this great truth as no mere words 
could do, he proceeded to lay down his life for 
us, and, says the apostle John, " we ought to 



28 PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 

lay down our lives for tlie brethren." The 
contrast between the spirit of these teachings 
and that which makes a struggle for preem- 
inence the life of the schools is strong and 
painful. Children may play and sit and eat 
together in peace, but the great object for 
wdiich they are sent to school must be accom- 
plished only through an endless conflict for 
place, honor, or reward. None is to be satis- 
fied while another is head. Consequently only 
one can be satisfied in the largest class. What 
angry looks, what despairing countenances, 
what weeping faces have we seen in the school- 
room, under tlie ruthless operation of this 
baneful system ! I wonder what the teachers 
thought when a little girl overtaxed her brain 
striving to commit to memory the greatest 
number of verses to recite in Sunday-school, 
and died, it was supposed, of fever produced 
thereby! 

Away with such a system, with its selfish 
motives, its exclusive rewards, and its unjust 
standards of merit; and let a system of truth 
and equity, which appreciates and rewards the 



PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 29 

merits of all, take its place. As well punish 
only the worst, as reward only the best. Let 
duty be enthroned as the aim, the guide and 
the measure of effort; as the motive, the rule, 
and the criterion of merit in scholastic and in 
all other life. Duty is, as the word iiTiplies, 
that which we owe to God, our neighbor, and 
ourselves. While no standard of duty can be 
perfectly understood or applied in our present 
degenerate state, yet the w-ord of God, inter- 
preted and applied by the conscience of man, 
is at once the most comprehensive and the 
most simple to all who have that word; to all 
who have it not, a purblind conscience becomes 
the author of many errors. Conscience is not 
an originative but simply a discriminative fac- 
ulty, exhibiting as in a spectrum the elements 
of duty involved in the facts held by the in- 
tellect. AVhile conscience is by no means in- 
fallible, and can never be above or contrary 
to the knowledge of each individual, it is in all 
cases the only possible guide in morals. Let 
every student study because duty to self, to 
parents, to mankind, and to God requires it, 



30 PKIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 

not because some other student studies. Let 
progress be measured from each pupil's for- 
mer status, and merit be determined by the 
steady efforts and advance of each, not by one's 
outstripping another. The system which 
drags one forward and holds another back, to 
suit the pace of a third, is injurious to all. 
Only so far as a man does his duty is he use- 
ful in the world. The young can not, then, 
be too early trained to act from a sense of 
duty. No principles should prevail in the 
schoolroom but such as should hold stronger 
sway in future life. If knowledge is power, 
too much care can not be taken that such 
moral principles shall accompany its acquisi- 
tion as shall insure its rightful use. If ambi- 
tion should be the mainspring of conduct, then 
let it be made strong in the young; but if it is 
the bane of manhood, it is the poison of youth. 
There are two great systems of morals in the 
world: the theistic and the empirical. The 
former makes accountability to God the ba- 
sis of conduct; the latter makes present expe- 
diency the criterion of right. Never was there 



PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 31 

a time when Christians had more need to 
guard with jealousy the spirit and conduct of 
all educational appliances. In several Euro- 
pean nations, and in this country, the state 
provides education for the public. The state 
professes no religion, and can teach none. 
The result of the theory may be, as is evi- 
denced by several foreign countries, a godless 
education and a nation of skeptics and infidels. 
Most of the teachers in our public schools are 
Christians now, but this may not always be 
the case. AYlien Christian principles and 
good moral character sliall be no more a nec- 
essary qualification for a teacher of a public 
school than they now are for a sherifi;'or a ju- 
ror, what then will become of morals in the 
schools? President Grant proposed, in exact 
accordance with the spirit of our government, 
to exclude the Bible from public schools. It 
is not now taught, if read at all, in one out of 
ten public schools. Can such schools satisfy 
Christian people? The Churches should main- 
tain and multiply, with increasing zeal and 
liberality, the large number of literary insti- 



32 PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 

tutions under their control; and see to it that 
duty to God, our neighbor, and ourselves be 
made the fundamental rule of conduct in them 
all. If selfish ambition rule among the chil- 
dren of this world, let it not poison the foun- 
tains of Christmn education. Let not sons and 
daughters go out from our schools filled with an 
insatiable ambition, but thoroughly taught and 
trained to obey the behests of duty. Ambition 
is never satisfied, and is ever disappointed; 
duty often realizes more than its moderate ex- 
pectations. Ambition lays its plans, and claims 
God as the Author of them ; duty seeks only 
to make God's plans her own. Ambition en- 
slaves us to a dominant passion; duty subjects 
us to divine commands. Duty holds our pow- 
ers under gentle and constant sway; ambi- 
tion drives with impetuous and exhausting 
fury. Duty is a spirit from on high; ambi- 
tion is a fury from the pit. Duty would serve, 
but ambition would rule. There is neither 
piece nor rest to the ambitious soul, but the 
dutiful spirit is kept in perfect peace. 

"Duty is the sublimest word in the English 



PKIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 33 

language," said Robert E. Lee, as he passed 
from the battle-field of failure in his country's 
cause to the peaceful toils of the schoolroom. 
He who would pronounce the man less worthy, 
or his achievements less meritorious, because 
he was not successful in conquering his oppo- 
nents must surely be lacking in the best ele- 
ments of judgment. To fail as he did was 
certainly nobler and better than to succeed as 
many have done. The theory which makes 
superiority alone the test of merit in the 
schools is quite of a kind with that which 
makes might the sole arbiter of right in the 
social and political spheres. Yet the latter 
princij)le is so abhorrent to the dictates of 
justice that none would avow it, and none but 
tyrants would act upon it. Away, then, with 
the system of strife and injustice, and let 
duty's wholesomely energizing power be dif- 
fused through all the schools. Instead of the 
selfish and vindictive spirit of the motto quo- 
ted in the outset, which proclaims a purpose 
to surpass all others and claim the best for it- 
self, let the motto rather be, io 'nnpvove all mij 
8 



34 PRIZE-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS. 

time and poicers, and do my dufij in all things. 
Let ^'Dutif be the motto of the school, the in- 
spiration of the student, and the talisman 
against all foes and failures in coming life. Let 
the honest youth inquire not " How I shall ex- 
cel all others? " but" How shall I make the best 
use of all my powers?" how shall I answer the 
ends for which I was created? and how shall I 
secure for my own conscience and from all who 
know me, the wholesome and not uncharitable 
plaudit, 'Wdl done? ' " Thus, by "mounting 
on the shoulders of our former selves," and 
not by riding over others, shall we advance in 
learning and in all things for the best. 



FILL YOUR OWN PLACE, 

OR MORALS IN RHYME. 

Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship, 
nor nobly which is done in pride.— Ruskin. 

Fill your own place, and fill it well ; 
From ro3'al throne to prison-cell, 
'Tis worth, not hirth, adorns each place 
And helps to raise our fallen race. 
Through discontent th.e angels fell 
And found their proper place in hell. 
The lives of toil and deaths of pain 
Have brought mankind the greatest gain. 
Who pinetli for another's lot 
The heavenly rule must have forgot, 
That each shall his own burden bear, 
And each shall feel his brother's care. 
Who'd fill your place if you did not? 
Perhaps you fill it to a dot. 
Would you unto another give 
The life designed for you to live? 
Forego a glory all your own 
In strife to seize another's crown? 
There's need for what each soul can do. 
The world is made complete by you. 
The man whose state you most admire 



36 FILL YOUK OWN PLACE. 

May look on yours with strong desire. 
The feet and hands, the ear and eye 
In envy cry — in scorn reply — 
They all are of one body parts, 
Wliiche'er is pained the other smarts. 
Another turn in fortune's wheel 
The proud man's fate for woe may s<^al; 
Who once was rich, but now is poor, 
Had Ijetter never known good store. 
The tallest tree the storm strikes first, 
And tears the richest foliage most ; 
The low, scant shrub bends and escapes 
While desolation round it sweeps. 
Then be thy lot or low or high 
In sweet contentment live and die; 
To do the work assigned to thee 
Is as an angel's ministry. 
Seek thou no place, no duty shun. 
But be with Christ in Spirit one; 
God will not praise you in that day 
That you've crushed rivals by the way; 
But if you've helped a helpless one, 
Then you the noblest work have done. 



FEEEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 

If the will, which we find governs the members of 
the b ) ly, and determines their motions, does govern 
itself, and determines its own actions, it doubtless de- 
termines them in the same way, even by antecedent 
volitions. The will determines which way the hands 
and feet move, by an act of choice; and there is no 
other way of the will's determining, directing, or com- 
manding anything at all. Whatsoever the will com- 
mands, it commands by an act of the will. So that 
the freedom of the will consists in this, that it has it- 
self and its own actions under its command and direc- 
tion, and its own volitions are determined by itself. It 
will follow that every free volition arises from another 
antecedent volition, directing and commanding that; and 
if that directing volition be also free, in that also the 
will is determined; that is to say, that directing voli- 
tion is determined by another going before that; and 
so on, till we come to the first volition in the whole 
series; and if that first volition be free, and the will 
self-determined in it, then that is determined by an- 
other volition preceding that — which is a contradic- 
tion, because by the supposition it can have none be- 
fore it. But if that first volition is not determined by 



38 FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 

any preceding act of the will, then that act is not de- 
mined by the will, and so is not free in the Arminian 
notion of freedom, which consists in the will's self- 
determination. And if that first act of the will be not 
free, none of the following acts, which are determined 
by it, can be free. 

The above is taken from the famous work 
of Jonathan Edwards on " The Freedom of 
the Will and Moral Agency," first published 
in 1853. By this W(3rk chiefly he acquired a 
world-wide reputation as a metaphysician of 
the highest order. Able transatlantic critics 
pronounced him "the highest of all his con- 
temporaries," and "perhaps unmatched, cer- 
tainly unsurpassed, among men," in the field 
of metaphysical argumentation. The above 
is a select specimen of his strong and subtle 
reasoning, according to which every act of the 
human will is bound fast in the iron chain of 
fate. But mankind need not consent to be 
robbed of the "liberty wherewith God has 
made us free," by even this masterly logic. 
This argument presents a most remarkable 
instance of w^hat the logicians call begging 
the question, assuming, as it does through- 



FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 39 

out, the question in dispute. It is said: "If 
the will determines its own actions, it doubt- 
less determines them in the scune wai/ in which 
it determines the motion of the hands and 
feet — that is, by antecedent volitions^ No, not 
doidjfJess, for there is grave doubt. Why is 
the will properly said to govern the motions 
of the body by antecedent volitions? Is it 
not because the will itself must be supposed 
to be external to and more or less distant 
from each member of the body, and therefore 
to require time and sequence for the trans- 
mission of its orders to the different members 
of the body? But this idea could not enter 
into any proper conception of the self-detei'- 
mination of the will. Is not the will an indi- 
visible unit? Would not its volitions, on the 
supposition of its being self-governing, ' be 
each spontaneous, instantaneous, untransm it- 
ted, and independent of any antecedent, save 
the existing mind? One of the chief difficul- 
ties in connection with this question arises 
from the lack of proper words, and especially 
of proper illustrations by which to convey 



40 FEEEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 

our ideas. The Arminiau holds the will to 
be free in a sense to which there is no anal- 
ogy in the universe save in God himself. To 
set out, therefore, in the discussion of the 
freedom of the will, with conceptions and ex- 
pressions of its action which imply constraint, 
is to beg the question at the start; and to il- 
lustrate thi^ orighiation of its acts by those 
things which are confessedly under the con- 
trol of others is not only equivalent to as- 
suming what should be proved, but it is to 
fetter our own minds, while we befog and 
mislead the minds of all others who adopt the 
illustration. 

It is even asserted that " there is no other 
■waij of the will's determining anything at all, 
except by antecedent volitions." Why not? 
That is the question. Says our author: "If 
that first volition is not determined by any 
preceding act of the will, then that act is not 
determined by the will; and so is not free in 
the Arminian notion of freedom." Here the 
ic'iU and an act of the irill are confounded. If 
the will can not act without a preceding act 



FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 41 

of the will, then, if it acts at all, it must have 
been acting from eternity. Every act must 
have been preceded by another. There could 
have been no primal act. It is as much as to 
say, the will can not will without previously 
willing to will. All the acts of the v>-ill are 
first assumed to be related to each other, as 
the links in a chain, and then the possibility 
of a first link is denied, on the ground that 
there is no preceding link on which it may 
hang. 

This argument rests upon the error of what 
Sir William Hamilton calls " a one-sided view 
of the finitude of the mind." By this method 
the infidel may easily prove, either that God 
as the great First Cause can not exist, or that 
he is himself the subject of eternal fate. 

If we can not conceive how anything can 
exist without being dependent on something 
previously existing, then we can not conceive 
of God as a cause uncaused, and we should 
conclude, according to this mode of argu- 
ment, that God does not exist. Likewise it 
may be argued that if the human will can put 



42 FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 

forth no act that is not determined by a pre- 
ceding act of itself, then every act of God is, 
for the same reason, determined by a prece- 
ding act, and God is himself controlled by un- 
alterable necessity, and that, too, a necessity 
not arising from his moral attributes, but 
natural, constitutional, and invincible. If 
there is, then, any freedom in the universe — if 
it be not a vast complex machine, moving 
without a mover — there must be some other 
way for wills to act than that to which Ed- 
wards would confine the Armiuian notion of 
freedom. If God is free, could he not make 
man also free? Why may not the human 
will be the source of volitions, as the sun is of 
light? Does the sunlight of to-day depend 
upon the sunlight of yesterday? Can not 
God lodge power in man to be used, within 
certain limits, as freely as God uses his own? 
May not self-government be synonymous 
with freedom? Our inability to conceive the 
absolute commencement of volition is no ar- 
gument against its possibility, si'nce we are 
equally unable to conceive the absolute non- 



FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 43 

commencement or infinite regression of voli- 
tions. Volition in man must have had a be- 
ginning, or else man bad no beginning. Why 
not, then, admit that the will is free, in the 
sense that its acts are not caused by anything 
outside of itself, and that they are independ- 
ent of all preceding acts or states of itself; 
that it is a power which assimilates man to 
his Maker, and renders him capable of ac- 
countability to God? 

Yery difierent conclusions from these of 
Edwards may be reached by stating the ar- 
gument thus: If the will governs itself, it 
doubtless determines its own acts in a differ- 
ent way from that in which it controls the 
meml)ers of the body, which are external to 
itself. The actions of the body are deter- 
mined by antecedent acts of the will, whose 
influence is trMiismitted to its various parts 
by those nerves which our Creator has sup- 
plied for this purpose; but the will, being an 
indivisible unit, can not be conceived as giving 
orders to itself (except in a figurative sense 
which requires the idea of plurality of parts 



44 FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 

in the will), but must be supposed to act in a 
manner peculiar to itself. It is itself the 
fountain of action. It can act for or against 
any and all motives, and can not be forced by 
any power known on earth or revealed from 
heaven. Since, then, nothing can be thought 
to be the author of its own enslavement, and 
since our whole consciousness would be a lie 
and our accountability to God absurd, if our 
wills are controlled b}^ any power outside of 
ourselves, we must conclude that the human 
will is sovereign in itself — the image of God 
in the soul of man. It is personality in 
man that wills and acts without cominilsion. 
Otherwise his nature is a fraud and himself 
a machine or a slave. 

If, however, according to the argument of 
some writers, God is himself the subject of 
necessity, then all support for the doctrine of 
human freedom, drawn from the supposed free- 
dom of God, must fail. They maintain the 
freedom of man, as a probationer choosing and 
fixing a moral character; but deny freedom to 
God, as under subjective necessity to act 



FKEEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 45 

just as lie does. Yet it ma}^ be asked, if 
God's acts are determined, who or what de- 
termines them? God, or some other being or 
power? To say that the laws of his being de- 
termine them is not satisfactory. Are the 
laws of his being stronger than God? If so, 
how did they come to be so, and how do we 
know that they will continue to be so? 

To say that God can not do otherwise than 
lie does is to make him a machine. To affirm 
that he will not do wrong, and that his choice 
will ever be the manifestation and criterion of 
wisdom and goodness, is to ascribe to him his 
true glory. The Scriptures''-' decLare that it is 
impossible for God to lie. No clear thinker 

* Seneca, a Stoic, f-ays: " Vir bonus non potest non 
facere quod facit; in omni actn par sibi, jam non concilio 
bonus, sed more eo j^erductus; ut non tantum recte fa- 
cere possit, sed nisi recte facere non possit." Velleius 
Paterculns said of the younger Cato: "Homo virtuti 
simillimus, et per omnia ingenio Diis quani hominibus 
propior, qui nunquam recte fecit ut facere videretur, 
sed quia aliter facere non poteraU' (Farrar's '* Early Days 
of Christianity," p. 029, note.) 



46 FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 

would confouiKl the impossibility here spoken 
of with that implied in the assertion, it is im- 
possible for man to fly. The impossibility in 
the one case arises from physical inability; in 
the other, from moral indisposition. God will 
not lie, not because truth controls him, but be- 
cause he maintains truth. It adds far more 
to God's glory to think that, having the power 
to do wrong, he will always do right, than to 
suppose that he does right because he can 
not do wrong. Can wo not trust God with 
liberty? 

There appears to be nothing gained by those 
metaphysical philosophers and theologians 
who seek to find a surer criterion of right and 
wrong, and a firmer basis for moral law, than 
the will of God. They have sought it in " the 
authority of the state;" in "something inher- 
ent in the nature of things," as "fitness," 
"truth," "relations," "moral beauty;" in 
"the highest happiness;" in "pride gratified 
by flattery;" in "an inner reciprocal sympa- 
thy;" in "the moral sense;" and in "intui- 
tion." Why thus tax their brains for some- 



47 

thing stronger, surer, clearer, or more author- 
itative than the will of God? If there is an 
essential fitness of things, did not God make 
that fitness? And does not God maintain that 
fitness? Did not God ordain our ideas of fit- 
ness? Could he not have made us to think 
otherwise of fitness than we do, had he so 
chosen? Who dare answer these questions in 
the negative? And are the things that are 
determined by the will of God more stable 
than that will itself? The objection to the 
will of God as the ultimate rule of right seems 
to be that it is arbitrary; and, therefore, con- 
ceivably changeable. Why should anything 
be thought more unchangeable than the free 
will of God? Any such supposition involves 
the idea that God is somehow under the do- 
minion of an established order outside of him- 
self, or at least that he is controlled by the 
immutability of his own attributes. AVho can 
affirm that aught is immutable, but the will of 
God? And that immutability we hold, as we 
do God's existence, upon faith alone. 

If, however, according to the teachings of 



48 FKEEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 

many moralists, the will of God is not the sole 
foundation of the moral law and the ultimate 
rule of right, it is certain no surer ground or 
rule can be found elsewhere. One says: " The 
law of God is supreme, unchangeable reason; 
it is unalterable rectitude; it is the everlast- 
ing fitness of all things that are or ever were 
created." How does reason become unchange- 
able, but by the will of God? Did reason es- 
tablisli itself without God, and above God? 
Who decides what rectitude is? How did we 
come to have our ideas of rectitude? Es- 
pecially, wliat makes rectitude unalterable? 
Did it make itself so, or was it made so by our 
thoughts; or did God make it so? All such 
expressions as the above quotation seem al- 
most meaningless, unless we suppose some- 
thing to exist independent of God. 

If all things, save God, were created, all 
laws of thought are the results of creative pow- 
er; and, while we can not even imagine how 
we should have thought or felt about right or 
wrong, or aught else, had we been created dif- 
ferently, we surely can not limit God's power 



FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 49 

or prerogative, and say that, he could not have 
made us to think fundamentally differently on 
any or all subjects from what we now do. 
Why, then, speak of " the everlasting fitness 
of things?" How can "everlasting fitness" 
be any better or stronger than the simple will 
of God? Did things have a fitness before 
they were made, or did not their fitness 
arise from their relations as created? If, then, 
God made the fitness of things, their fitness 
only expresses his w^ill. 

To undertake fJius, even i)i f/ioinjhf, fo cjiko-coi- 
tee the uioval stabiliti/ of the iiin'rerse by deny'nifi 
freedom and absolute creative authorship^ even of 
moral distinctions^ to God, is no yain to reason 
and a great loss to faith. Whenever we un- 
dertake to bolster the will of God by his at- 
tributes or by the postulates of reason, those 
attributes or postulates will, in their turn, 
require to be bolstered, and we gain nothing 
in the end. As an origin of law, right, and 
authority, there is nothing imaginable that 
compares with the will of the Supreme Being. 
All other sources of right and law seem to be 
4 



50 FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 

the mere figments of human fancy. We are 
compelled to come to the incomprehensible 
and absolute first cause somewhere. Why 
undertake to rob the Biblical theology of its 
preeminent excellence and simplicity, tracing, 
as it does, the origin and support of all things 
to the will of a personal God, by our vague 
and endless endeavors to find sometldng 
more stable than the will of God? Every 
suggestion of anything superior to the will of 
God savors of })antheism, as when we say 
that a thing is right not because God wills 
it, but God wills it because it is right. 
AVhence does the right come that rules God? 
Either from himself or some other being. 
If from another, then we have another and a 
superior God; if from himself, then it is but 
the expression of his will. 

All these varied attempts to find other 
foundation for right and law than the will of 
God seem to be but the futile efi'orts of intel- 
lect to avoid the exercise of faith. Man 
would rather understand than believe. He 
prefers the pride of reason to the humility of 



FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIYINE. 51 

faith. Yet he who will not believe where he 
can not understand can never take hold of 
the things of God. The exercise of faith is 
God's supreme requirement of man, and the 
utmost duty of the soul to its Maker. The 
sublime simplicity of faith is marred by the 
anxious, though futile, attempts of reason to 
supersede or support it. 

Biblical philosophy stands contradistin- 
guished from all other systems in ascribing 
to a personal God the origin, authorship, 
and absolute sovereignty in all things. The 
strongest and most laborious intellects of the 
ages have sought in vain for a more satisfac- 
tory foundation for that faith to which all 
must come at last, or wander "in endless 
mazes lost." Yet even some believers in the 
Bible have, as has been shown, allowed them- 
selves to be led by the speculations of meta- 
13hysician8 to seek for a better foundation 
for right than the will of God. In so doing 
they have abandoned their strength. The at- 
tempt of the ancients to account for the sup- 
port of the world by the serpent on the back 



52 FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 

of the tortoise was not more futile tlian all 
attempts to find a basis for moral law outside 
the will of God. 

Quite similar in origin and tendency is the 
doctrine which denies moral freedom to God. 
The Scriptures declare: "He doeth accord- 
ing to his will in the army of heaven, and 
among the inhabitants of the earth: and none 
can stay his hand, or say unto him. What 
doest thou;" "for he giveth not account of 
any of his matters." It has already been 
shown that nothing is gained by denying 
freedom to God, Let us now in([uire what 
the divine oracles teach on tlie subject, not 
directly, but by necessary implication. 

1. The fact that Adam was endowed at his 
creation with the capacity to choose moral 
good or evil is a demonstration of the moral 
freedom of his Maker. If, as is maintained, 
God is ever under subjective necessity to act 
in a certain way, and that the best iDOSsible, 
how is it conceivable that he could endow his 
creature, man, with the power of choosing 
and doing either good or evil? If any deny 



FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 53 

that Adam was free to choose good, it is not 
proposed to reason with them now. That de- 
nial would lead to the doctrine of the eter- 
nity of matter, make the universe a machine, 
and God only a part of its matter or forces, 
sanction stoicism in philosophy, and lead to 
licentiousness for religion. But that Adam 
possessed the power to choose and do evil is 
incontestably proved by the fact that he ex- 
ercised that power. Now it is inconceivable 
that God could produce in his creature, man, 
moral powers which he did not himself pos- 
sess, and could not exercise if he chose. 
Could God impart to man a moral or other 
sort of power which he did not realize in his 
own being, or could not realize if he would? 
No powders can be supposed to reside in the 
creature which did not exist, actually or iws- 
sibly, in the Creator. We ma}; easily imagine 
the creature doing that which his Maker 
would not do, but not what his Maker could 
not do if he would. It is not forgotten nor 
overlooked that our opponents hold that the 
necessity which binds God to righteousness 



54 FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 

is wholly subjective. The purpose to create 
Adam was subjective, till it began to be real- 
ized objectively. That purpose embraced a 
capacity of free choice in God's ideal of his 
noblest earthly creature. Let him show who 
can that God, if for any reason himself in- 
capable of free moral choice, either could or 
would endow his creature, man, with such 
power. Yet Adam was so endowed, or else 
fated to do wrong. If the latter be affirmed, 
then must God be supposed not only to pos- 
sess the power to do wrong, but to have ex- 
hibited it through man from the beginning to 
this day. 

2. The Scriptures, in declaring that man was 
made in the image of God, do virtually affirm 
the moral freedom of God, in whatever sense 
freedom may be admitted as belonging to 
Adam. This argument must not be confound- 
ed with the preceding, for it is quite distinct. 
Man might have been free and not in the im- 
age of God; or he might have borne the image 
God and not have been free, if God were not 
free. But, man being free, the first argument 



FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 55 

inferred that his Maker was free; if, moreover, 
man was both free and in the image of God, 
this second argument affirms the unavoidable 
conclusion that his Maker must have been 
free also. All the force of the preceding ar- 
gument passes into this, and herein receives 
the immense corroboration of the scriptural 
affirmation that man, free as he was, was tbe 
image of his Maker. AYhatever we may sup- 
pose the image of God as existing in man to 
imply, we can scarcely imagine man's highest 
attribute, his capacity for moral freedom, to 
be excluded from that image. We can not but 
believe that the noblest attributes of man re- 
flect most truly the image of his Maker. That 
image is usually sui3posed to consist in right- 
eousness and true holiness. But to speak of 
a necessitated righteousness, or a compulsory 
holiness, is to speak irrationally, if not absurd- 
ly. If, then, the essential elements of the 
divine image in man do not exclude, but ne- 
cessitate moral freedom, why should such free- 
dom be thought to be an impossible or an un- 
worthy attribute of God? 



56 FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 

The conclusion then follows that, if man at 
his creation was morally free, his Maker must 
have been free also; or, if man was not free, 
he must have been somehow constrained by 
his Maker to the choice of evil, which assump- 
tion imputes a choice of evil rather than good 
to God; and he, being immutable, must forever 
continue to choose the evil and compel his crea- 
ture, man, to practise it — a conclusion too 
monstrous and revolting to be affirmed. The 
only alternative is, that God is free as to the 
choice of moral good and evil, and that he so 
created man, who, by the abuse of his liberty, 
" Brought death into the world and all our woe." 
This supposition by no means jeopards the 
great doctrine of God's immutability, which 
must not be given up. How can we be more 
certain that God can not change than that he 
will not, though he can? His declared un- 
changeableness is simply a fact that chal- 
lenges our faith. All attempts to guarantee 
it by seeking reasons in his attributes or in 
any conceivable relations of things seem ut- 
terly vain, setting out in a circle of secondary 



FEEEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 57 

reasons, each of which requires another, till 
we are finally driven to the will of God as the 
ultimate and self-sufficient reason for all 
things. If it be asked why do two and two 
make four, or why am I obliged to tell the 
truth, the answer is, I am so constituted that 
I can not think otherwise in the one case, nor 
feel otherwise in the other. Could God have 
made me to think and feel otherwise? I dare 
not say that he could not. The relations of 
things result from their ci'eation, and our ap- 
prehension of those relations and of the duties 
which those relations suggest arise from the 
adaptation of our minds to our surroundings. 
If we think in accordance with the true rela- 
tions of things, we are sane; if we think other- 
wise, we are, to the degree of that erroneous 
thinking, insane. If we act in accordance with 
our true relations, we are good; if we act other- 
wise, we are bad. To ascertain the true rela- 
tions of things to ourselves is but to learn the 
will of God concerning us. Conscience, or the 
moral sense, is that in man which renders him 
capable of realizing a feeling of obligation or 



58 FEEEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 

duty in view of his relation to God and to his 
fellow beings. Hence every imaginable form 
of the rule of right amounts, in its application, 
only to a man's own judgment of what he 
ought to do. But the great underlying question 
is: " What ought a man to think to be right? " 
Is his conscience or his judgment of the fit- 
ness of things, or his sense of personal worthi- 
ness, always a safe guide? By no means. 
These are but the divinely appointed aids to 
man in his efforts to find out that which is un- 
doubtedly the ultimate criterion of right, the 
will of God. This will may be learned from 
God's Word, or inferred from his works, or felt 
in the instinct of our souls, but is unquestion- 
ably the only ultimate rule both of our faith 
and our practise. 

It is concluded, then, that God is not only 
free, but the author and x^erpetual maintainer 
of all truth, right, and law. He commands a 
thing not because it is right, or was right be- 
fore he commanded it, but all his commands 
are the declarations of his will, which is the 
fountain, criterion, and law of right. Through 



FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 59 

the ages we expect God's commauds to be con- 
sistent with all his previous works and words. 
This is, indeed, all that is really meant by the 
nature of things and the eternal fitness of 
things. Let it be remembered that things 
have no nature but what God gave them, and 
that things, as here spoken of, are not eternal, 
much less can their fitness be so, it being only 
the mutual adaptation of their relations and 
our ideas under the will of God. All mathe- 
matical as well as other truth rests upon the 
will of God for its basis. If there were no 
God, there would certainly be no outward uni- 
verse. Wliether numbers be regarded as ob- 
jective realities, or subjective conceptions of 
the mind, without God there would neither be 
things to be counted nor minds to count them. 
If there were no God, two and two would not be 
four, for neither one nor two nor four would 
have any existence. But does our belief that 
two and two make four, as things are, depend 
upon the will of God? Undoubtedly it does. 
A crazy man might think otherwise. If any 
man denies that we owe the sanity of our 



60 FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 

minds to God's providential care, these reason- 
ings are not for liim. 

Suppose tliat in answer to the question, 
** Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? " 
it should be replied, " In many things God does 
wrong." Would not such an answer be futile? 
"Who art thou, O man, that repliest against 
God?" Shall a man argue against the stand- 
ard of right, or tliink against the criterion of 
thought? Indeed, some do presume to ar- 
raign God's word and wijrks for condemna- 
tion. 

If the above question be supposed to imply 
that liberty, then may God be put under C(jn- 
demnation by his creatures, and the sovereign 
of the universe stand guilty at the bar of hu- 
man reason. 

Is not the question rather a challenge for 
men to perceive and admire the rigliteousness 
of God? We can conceive of God as doing- 
wrong onl}^ by acting out of harmony with 
himself. Our judgment of right and wrong 
springs from the constitution of our minds 
as affected by all tliat is about us. We exj^ed 



FREEDOM, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 61 

constancy and consistency in God; hat if we should 
suppose that we had discovered aught to the con- 
trary, our fhougJits should be corrected by his will 
and works, and not liis ivill and works by our 
thoughts. " He is before all things, and by him 
all things consist." "Yea, let God be true, 
but every man a liar." If harmony, fitness, 
and truth bind God, he first established the 
harmony, designed the fitness, and gave to 
truth her being, her beauty, and her power; 
so that he is a law unto himself, which is the 
highest style of freedom. The will of God 
must forever remain the highest reason for 
itself, as well as for all things else, since what- 
ever may be adduced to justify, sanction or 
support it must be reckoned among its crea- 
tures or dependencies. 



Tin: KILL. 

Linos found in tin- l.rainln'H «»f n willow ovcrhanciiiL' n pclililo- 
b«>dde<l strt'fim. 

I (JO, I KO, 1 Kladly po, 

Just where or why, I <!<• imt know; 

For I have none the way to show, 

Ami yet I must forever (low. 

I hear a voice from fir away — 

I must be (rone — I can not stay. 

A saucy rill, I trip down-hill. 

And in the »hiu\e lie cool and still; 

I ripple o'er my i>ehbly way 

Where minnows play the livelonj? day; 

My birds make morn witli music thrill; 

At eve I wake the whippoorwill ; 

And when the stars 8en<l d-wn their light 

I kiss them every one ^'<»od ni^dit. 

I laujtrh an<l leaj>, I dash and sweep, 
My joyous way I always keep; 
I dance and run, I wait for none; 
And, as piy rills have always done, 
I snatch warm kisses from the sun 
And dash them everywhere for fun. 



THE KILL. 63 

I sometimes wind an<l sonu'times creep, 
An«l then I tnrn ami sneak an<l seep; 
And when you hear nie tniirmiirinp low 
TJH'ii something: tries to make me slow. 
Tiling's <lo provoke and try me so 
I hardly know which way to po, 
I curl and purl and twist and twirl, 
And then dart off in merry whirl ; 
I slide, I slide, and try to hide, 
Ami thou;;h I'd shun the pomj) of pride, 
I rise an<l swell and leap and fall, 
And still p» onw:ird after all. 

The children free play nfl with me; 
I join in all their artless ;;lee; 
With glad'ninp flights and merry s<'inid< 
My li(juid life for aye ahoundp. 
Oft, too, to me the aj^ed come hack 
To tread again in childhootl's track. 
But eye and ear and joy's glad tone 
With lapse of years arc «limmed or gone. 
Man Cometh forth, prows old, and dies, 
But my fresh fountain never dries; 
All i^'ladnrss tlows an<l u'rows with me. 
Forever new, forever free, 
While niMii and heast and hird and hee 
Take draiiLjhts or <ln»ps at will from me. 
When summer sun>^ with hurnim: lieat 



64 THE RILL. 

Drive famished herds to my retreat, 
The sweltering kine wade to their knees 
And bathe and drink and breathe at ease. 

Slip o'er the hill just when you will, 
And though you find me lying still. 
Yet come close by and take a peep, 
And you'll not find your love asleep. 
I've often seen you passing by, 
And oft your going made me sigh; 
Why don't you stop and dip your feet? 
My touch would be to them so sweet. 
I'd make you long, e'en in your dream, 
To spend your days beside my stream. 
If you'll come near and look at me. 
You'll on my breast your picture see; 
And your sweet face shall then be mine, 
And I shall with your beauty shine. 
The happiest stream in all the land 
To have so fair and fond a friend; 
And so we will our graces twine. 
And vou shall be mv Valentine. 



MES. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

The original constructor of the engine is 
the real author of the power and motion of 
the train. The molder of a character is the 
maker of a destiny; and whoever imparts 
transcendent qualities to a human soul coop- 
erates with the Divine Being in promoting 
the highest good of our race. The mother 
who brings into the world and trains a child 
who shall marshal the great forces of hu- 
manity on the side of truth and right, who 
shall quicken and enlarge the better thoughts 
of millions, or who shall inspire or fitly ex- 
press those nobler sentiments by which man- 
kind are raised toward the higher ends of life, 
deserves herself to be ranked among the 
great ones of the earth. To have been the 
mother of one such man as either John or 
Charles AYesley was enough to command for 
any woman more than a common regard; to 
have been the mother of them both entitles 



bb MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

Susanna Wesley to a double portion among 
the children of honor forever. Among these 
originating and determining forces which i)ro- 
duced and guided the great religious move- 
ment of the last hundred and fift}^ years 
called Methodism, the mother of the AVesleys 
must not be uncounted. Occupying during 
her life only the ordinary sphere of her sex, 
she so filled her place as mother and mistress 
in her home as to transmit a more i)owerful 
and permanent influence for good tlian per- 
haps any other human being of her day. 
She planted the handful of corn upon the top 
of the mountain, the fruits whereof did shake 
like Lebanon. She trained a lawgiver whose 
self-enforcing, because conscience-quickening, 
rules for holy living were to regulate myriads 
— yea, millions of the noblest lives on two 
continents, and wliose influence is destined, 
no doubt, to spread throughout the world. 
She tuned the harp whose divine strains were 
to gladden and bless all hearts, and go echo- 
ing down the centuries, waking slumbering 
souls to the dread of hell and to the hopes of 



MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 67 

eternal life. As the gentle and genial sun- 
beams silently permeate the atmosphere, and 
muster the forces that move in the sweeping 
tornado or murmur in the storm that shakes 
the earth, her forming hand and her inform- 
ing spirit wrought wondrous things in her 
two sons, brewing the gospel thunder and the 
poetic lightning which were to startle the 
English Church and rouse the careless world 
to a new sense of duty and of God. 

It is not surprising to find evidence that so 
extraordinary a woman owed much to he- 
reditary endowments. To doubt the possible 
moral improvement of our race and the cu- 
mulative enhancement of all our nobler pow- 
ers through the transmitted lesults of ances- 
tral growth in intelligence and virtue is to 
doubt the persistent prevalence and final tri- 
umph of good over evil in this world. Mrs. 
Wesley was honorably descended, being a 
daughter of the celebrated Dr. Annesley, who 
was one of those clergymen who at the time 
of the Eevolutiou preferred ejectment from 
their places to the subjection of their con- 



bo MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

sciences to the dictation of the government. 
He was indeed one of the most remarkable 
men of his times, especially for his zeal and 
popularity as a preacher and for his helpful 
kindness to the dissenting ministers of his 
day. His daughter Susanna had a superior 
mind, and was well educated not only in 
English but also in the Latin, Greek, and 
French. She was pronounced intelligent, 
amiable, beautiful, and pious. Her faculties 
were too evenly balanced to suggest any claim 
to genius, which usually consists in certain 
admirable extravagances of intellect, which 
are apt to be accompanied by corresponding 
deficiencies. She was much disposed to think 
for herself, and for a time became involved in 
metaphysical speculations which interrupted 
the constancy of her Christian faith. Though 
her father was, and continued to be for fifty 
years, a most devoted, self-sacrificing, and 
useful minister among the Dissenters, she of 
deliberate choice became a member of the 
Established Church. Her doctrinal specula- 
tions and aberrations — for she wandered for a 



MKS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 69 

time amid the errors of Sociuianism — togeth- 
er with her change of Church relations, show, 
to say the least, her independence of character. 
At about twenty years of age she was married 
to Rev. Samuel Wesley, a minister of the Es- 
tablished Church, and afterward for many 
years rector of Epworth. He was a man 
who, though not devoid of many great excel- 
lences of character, was yet better fitted by 
many of his habits and mental peculiarities 
for celibacy or for heaven, than for the care 
of a large family of children on this mundane 
sphere. He spent the chief part of his time 
in "beating rimes," as he expressed it, in 
writing and preaching sermons, in dispensing 
charity beyond his means, and in rousing 
wrath by the indiscreet assertion of his High- 
church and royal preferences, never taking 
due care that bread should increase with the 
increase of his family. His picture shows a 
man who looked to heaven, to the exclusion of 
earth. His wife was compelled to manage 
the temporal interests of the family— he had 
no turn for practical affairs. The years of 



70 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

Susanna Wesley's married life became years 
of increasingly burdensome toil. The story 
of her domestic struggles reads like the tale of 
a beleagued garrison. She was the mother of 
nineteen children, thirteen of whom were liv- 
ing at the same time. Notwithstanding the 
poverty and even want in which they often 
lived — enough to have crushed the spirit of 
any but one of the truest heroines the world 
ever produced — the order and discipline of 
her household were a model for all who came 
after her. A historian tells us: "The income 
of the rector of Epworth was comparatively 
small, and his children were very numerous. 
Twice the parsonage house was unfortunately 
burned down, and rebuilt at his own expense. 
His circumstances, therefore, were painfully 
embarrassed, and the children were far from 
having any superfluity of either diet or cloth- 
ing." In a letter dated January 20, 1722, 
Mrs. Wesley says to her brother, Mr. Samuel 
Annesley: "Mr. Wesley rebuilt his house in 
less than one year; but nearly thirteen years 
are elapsed since it was burned, yet it is not 



• MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 71 

half famished, nor are his wife and chiklreii 
half clothed to this day." In answer to ques- 
tions on the subject, she informed the Arch- 
bishop of York that she often experienced so 
much difficulty in obtaining bread, and in 
paying for it when it was obtained, as nearly 
equaled the pain of destitution. Indeed, it 
may be inferred from all our information on 
the subject that the Wesley family at Ep- 
worth often knew not one day how or where 
their living for the next was to be obtained. 
Constantly harassed and once imprisoned for 
debt as the father was, he yet failed, during 
his frequent absences from home attending 
the convocation in London, and on other 
public duties, duly to appreciate the pinching 
poverty and unshared toils of the mother who 
was giving her life to and for the children at 
home. Seldom, if ever, has the Biblical doc- 
trine that " it is good for a man that he bear 
the yoke in his youth " found a more signal 
illustration of its beneficent results than in 
the Wesley family at Epworth; for surely 
never did a mother know better than Susanna 



72 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

Wesley how to develop strength by the judi- 
cious application of the burdens of poverty 
and the restraints of law, or liow to sharpen 
wits at the grindstone of want. Amid the 
distress of her situation, God was her con- 
stant trust and helper. Her strength was 
from on high. "God," says she, "supports, 
and by his omnipotent goodness often totally 
suspends all sense of worldly things." 

The family government at Epworth em- 
braced, among other things, a school kept for 
many years in a room of the house set apart 
for that purpose. No hired teaclier officiated 
in that school. It was in conducting this 
home school that Mrs. AVesley gave evidence 
of such superior good sense and skill as must 
forever entitle her to the admiration and the 
honor of mankind. At five years of age each 
child was taken into the schoolroom, and, 
with rare exceptions, was taught its letters in 
one daj^ It was then put immediately to 
spelling out words and to reading the Bible. 
The interminable analytical nonsense of b-a 
ba, b-i bi, b-o bo, and b-u bu, had no place in 



MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 73 

her system of teaching. In setting her chil- 
dren to reading as soon as they learned the 
alphabet she anticipated by a hundred and 
fifty years the results of modern progress in 
the art of teaching. The hours of school 
were from nine till twelve in the morning and 
from two to five in the afternoon. No girl 
was put to sewing till she could read distinct- 
ly and correctly. The children were all so 
trained in the nursery from birth that they 
needed very little governing in school. The 
exercises were opened and closed with sing- 
ing, else how had proper early development 
ever been given to Charles's unparalleled apti- 
tude for metrical composition? Here was 
trained the greatest hymn-writer the world 
ever produced. "Every child's will must be 
subdued while it is very young," says this 
wise, because practically successful, expound- 
er and illustrator of child-training; "for this 
is the only strong and rational foundation of 
a religious education, witliout which both 
precept and example will be ineffectual." 
Her children were taught to be quiet at fami- 



74 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

ly prayers, and to ask a ])lessing by signs be- 
fore tliey could kaeel or speak. Each child 
was taken in turn to a ])lace of private prayer, 
and was botii taught to pray and commended 
to God. A sense of individual responsibility 
to Goil is the source of all personal piety. 
Here was inaugurated and maintained that 
sacred order of thought and action which 
qualitied John to be what he afterward be- 
came: a reformer of the doctrines and lives of 
almost all Christendom. The world had an 
abundance of sound doctrine and much of 
wise and wholesome precept before the days 
of Wesley; but it had nothing so short, so 
simple, and so good a guide for holy living as 
the "General Eules" which John Wesley i)re- 
pared for his United Societies. But whence 
came his ability to set forth such a formula 
for holiness? Were not the "General Eules," 
in spirit at least, like the words of King 
Lemuel, the proi)liecy which his mother had 
taught him? The family government at Ep- 
worth was the embodiment of Mrs. Wesley's 
idea of the teaching of God's Word. It was 



MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 75 

the form of her effort to fashion her chihlren 
unto godliness. Let it not be thought that in 
all this she was without sadder trials than 
any that mere labor and poverty may bring. 
Her spirit had trium[)hed over want when she 
wrote to the Archbishop of York: "I have 
learned that it is much easier to be contented 
with(jut riches than with them." The rectory 
was a home church and family school as hap- 
py, notwithstanding many privations, as per- 
haps any home in England; but Mrs. Wesley 
was not without the peculiar and deeper sor- 
rows incident to parenthood. Then, as now, 
not every worthy young woman could find a 
worthy man for a husband. Some of her 
daughters were very unhappily married, and 
brought inexpressible grief to the mother's 
heart. In the agony of her s<ud she congrat- 
ulates those who lose their children in in- 
fancy, declaring that "it is better to mourn 
ten children dead than one living, and I have 
buried many." Ten of her nineteen children 
reached adult years, and all became devoutly 
pious and died in the Lord. 



76 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

But Mrs. Wesley had another and scarcely 
a less important sphere of influence than that 
of the domestic circle. If Methodism found 
its cradle at Epworth, there also it was taught 
to walk. While her husband was away dis- 
charging the onerous duties of his calling, 
Susanna began to gather the poor neighbors 
with the children on Sundays, and to "read 
sermons, pray, and converse directly with the 
people" on religious toincs alone. Learning 
this through her letters, her hus])and remon- 
strated with her for so unauthorized a proce- 
dure. When he asked why not let some one else 
read, she replied: " You do not consider what 
a people these are. I do not think one man 
among them could read a sermon without 
spelling a good part of it, and how^ would that 
edify the rest? Nor has any of our family a 
voice strong enough to be heard by such a 
number of people." Her audience grew to 
two hundred or more. Some complained 
against the assembly as a conventicle, but she 
pleaded for the privilege of teaching the com- 
mon i3eople, who, as when the Saviour spoke 



MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 77 

it, " heard the word gladly." Her services 
were calling ont people not accustomed to at- 
tend public worship. They were tilling up the 
parish church, gathering in the straying, and 
bringing many sinners to hear the gospel and 
seek the Lord. When lier husband insisted 
that she should discontinue these meetings, 
she begged him to relieve her of the respon- 
sibility of that act by assuming it himself. 
"Do not advise," she said, "but command me 
to desist." Here was the spirit which, carried 
to its legitimate results, as it was in her sons, 
gave Methodism to the world. Here was con- 
scientious conviction of duty yielding only un- 
der compulsion to opposing authority. Such 
a spirit, not wisely regulated, might lead to 
fanaticism and violence; but under proper 
guidance, it moves, reforms, corrects, and sanc- 
tifies the world. It is the same spirit as that 
which moved Peter and John to cast upon 
the council at Jerusalem the fearful demand, 
" Whether it be right in the sight of God to 
harken unto you more than unto God, judge 
ye." When in after-years John Wesley, her 



78 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

son, returning from one of his preaching toni's, 
hurried home under mingled grief and dis- 
pleasure at hearing of the irregular conduct 
of Thomas Maxfield, who had violated the or- 
der of the Church by preaching without au- 
thority, she said to him: "John, take heed 
what you do to that man, for he is as much 
called of God to preach as you are." Thus 
does she become — not only by her example be- 
fore her children at Epworth, but by her coun- 
sel to John at the critical moment — the author 
of that system of lay preaching without which 
Methodism could never have been. 

Comparatively few of the ministers of the 
Established Church ever became Methodists. 
The great body of its heroic preachers were 
laymen. The Church would not grant them 
orders. AVesley, with the views which he held 
during all the early period of Methodism, 
could not ordain them. They must preach as 
laymen or not at all. The mother s advice 
prevailed — he let them preach, and the instru- 
mental power that was to fill the world with 
the theology, the hymns, and the worshiping 



MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 79 

assemblies of Methodism took its origin and 
form under the example and advice of Susan- 
na Wesley; for, be it remembered, John Wes- 
ley obeyed his mother to her dying day. His 
intellect never outgrew hers far enough to 
suggest any better way. But let us under- 
stand she simply embraced life's opportunities 
as they were presented. She filled her place; 
she obeyed God. The world was ready for 
Methodism. The ungodly clergy and the back- 
slidden and worldly membership of the Church 
needed it. Mrs. Wesley did not hinder, but 
helped, its coming. As her sons John and 
Charles traversed England preaching to as- 
sembled thousands on commons, in the streets, 
and in every place, the everlasting gospel, 
while the kingdom almost literally resounded 
with the roar of persecuting mobs and the 
shoutings of multitudes as they heard for the 
first time the glad tidiugs of salvation, I imag- 
ine the mother " kept all these things in her 
heart, and pondered them," even as Mary of 
old did the things spoken concerning her son. 
She had trained her sons for their work. 



80 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

Luther's Keformation pertained chiefly to 
ecclesiastical authority and doctrine; Wesley 
looked rather to the spiritual interpretation of 
the Word, and to practical holiness of life. 
Luther reformed the body of the Church; 
Wesley, the soul. While John Wesley was at 
Oxford he became favorably impressed with 
the Arminian system of theology, as contra- 
distinguished from the prevalent Calvinism of 
that day. His mother, as he inforuis us, 
greatly encouraged and confirmed him in the 
adoption of that system, which through him 
afterward became the doctrinal foundation of 
Methodism. We are left to imagine the ex- 
tent of her influence over him in this matter, 
but may believe it to have been great, as she 
abhorred Calvinism. Her system of teaching 
was both progressive and fruitful. It can 
scarcely be doubted that the admirable form 
of godliness in which she trained her chil- 
dren led to that extrordinary power which 
afterward attended the preaching of her sons. 
Hear her, as her spirit, soaring above all earth- 
born woes, utters sweet notes of triumph and 



MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 81 

repose: "Oft my mind emerges from the cor- 
rupt animality to which she is united, and by 
a flight peculiar to her nature soars beyond the 
bounds of time and place in contemplation of 
the invisible Supreme, whom she perceives to 
be her only happiness, her proper center,' in 
whom she finds repose inexplicable, such as 
the world can neither give nor take away." A 
mother who amid the cares, burdens, and per- 
plexities of a numerous family could employ 
such a style and utter such sentiments as these 
must have been possessed of a very superior 
mind as well as of a transcendent faith. 
There is a sound of the sermons of John, and 
of the hymns of Charles, and of the watch- 
word of Methodism through the centuries in 
that sentence. But the fruit of the seed was 
richer and sweeter than that from which it 
grew. She gave to her sons the alabaster box 
of the gospel, thinking its costly contents too 
precious for common souls, till they broke it 
and filled her own heart, as well as the hearts 
of thousands more, with the unspeakable joys 

of the witness of the Spirit. 
6 



82 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

Let us now briefly recall a few of the more 
marked features of Methodism in its incipien- 
cy, and inquire as to Mrs. Wesley's connection 
therewith. 

1. Methodism was an offshoot of the Church 
of England. It may be doubted whether it 
was morally possible for Methodism to have 
originated outside of the Established Church. 
Had it been possible for a Dissenter to have 
conceived its peculiar doctrines and polity, 
it would have been quite impossible to give 
them form and life outside of the national 
Church. The state Church was the grand 
trunk from wlrich this vigorous branch de- 
rived the essential elements of its early life. 
Had Methodism begun in dissent, it would no 
doubt have been crushed in the bud. If these 
views be correct, how remarkable is the fact 
that both Susanna Annesley and Samuel Wes- 
ley, long before their marriage, and without 
any consultation with each other, should each 
have renounced dissent and joined the Estab- 
lished Church most unexpectedly and unac- 
countably even to their most intimate friends! 



MKS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 83 

Was it the design of Providence that John and 
Charles Wesley should be born in the nation- 
al Church? Could such irregular outdoor 
preaching as they and their unordained coad- 
jutors conducted throughout the kingdom for 
fifty years have been tolerated elsewhere than 
under the shadow of the Establishment? 

2. Itinerancy and lay preaching were of the 
formal essence of Methodism. The paternal 
grandfather of John and Charles Wesley was 
through life an itinerant preacher who refused 
orders to the end of his useful career. If the 
two grandsons inherited from him the pecul- 
iar aptness to heed the Saviour's command, 
" Go ye into all the world, and preach the gos- 
pel to every creature," yet the idea of lay 
preaching, which alone gave any real and per- 
manent effect to that command, so far as Meth- 
odism was concerned, originated, both as a 
fact and as a doctrine, with their mother. 
Susanna Wesley was the first lay preacher of 
Methodism. Had she not conversed with her 
neighbors publicly on the subject of relig- 
ion, and afterward defended Maxfield for do- 



84 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

iiig the" same, lay preaching might never have 
been. 

3. Methodism was an innovation which re- 
quired for its establishment, besides many 
other great qualities of soul, inexhaustible pa- 
tience, together with an invincible firmness and 
independence of sinrit in its leaders. These 
Susanna Wesley, as well as her husband, pos- 
sessed in a preeminent degree. As evidence 
of this fact, witness her early change of her 
Chui'ch relations, her demand for a " com- 
mand to desist" from liolding religious meet- 
ings with her neighbors, and especially her 
refusal to say "Amen " when her husband 
prayed in the family for a reigning prince 
whom she conscientiously believed not to be 
entitled to the throne; whereupon her hus- 
band declared that if they could not have the 
same king they should not abide in the same 
house, and left his home for a twelvemonth, 
after which he returned in peace -neither 
chiding the other with any fault in the matter. 
Such was the conscientious invincibleness of 
the parents of John Wesley; and was there 



MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 85 

ever in any other man so full a combination 
and so admirable a balance of high qualities 
as in John Wesley? It is not strange that 
critics find it difficult to discover the secret of 
his power. 

Conspicuously jjjreat in every noble gift; 
Wonderful in all, preeminent in none. 

A man who at eighty years of age could say 
he had never felt low spirits an hour in his 
life; who had traveled more, preached more, 
and written more than any other man of his 
day; who had with persistent courage pro- 
voked and met the powers of the Church, the 
fury of mobs, and the rage of hell in carrying 
out the convictions of his conscience — must 
have had no common blood in his veins. 

4. But it is not so much in any special fea- 
tures of Methodism that we would expect to 
find the impress of her whom Isaac Taylor 
aptly styled its mother, as in that indefinable 
and immeasurable inlluence by which she made 
her sons capable of originating such a move- 
ment. Without such a mother such sons could 
never have been. There can be little doubt that 



86 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

the preeminent spirituality which character- 
ized all the work of the sons was largely due to 
those early impressions which tliey, perhaps 
unconsciously, received from the spirit of that 
mother who, "often found in the invisible Su- 
preme her only happiness, her proper center, 
and repose inexplicable, such as the world can 
neither give nor take away." 

In estimating the character of Mrs. Wesley 
due emphasis should ever be laid upon that 
which most distinguished her as a woman— I 
mean her genius for family government. If 
she was not a genius in the common acceptation 
of the w^ord, she surely possessed genius such 
as has seldom been equaled, perhaps never 
excelled, for the highest work of woman on 
earth — that is, family government. 

If lawmaking is the highest function of be- 
ing, he who makes the wisest law^s is the no- 
blest being. That, too, is the wisest law which 
may be made to affect the greatest number for 
the greatest good. Judged by this standard, 
Mrs. Wesley's code for family government 
will bear comparison with the best that have 



MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 87 

been fraoied by men. Applying as it does 
the highest principles of government to the 
regulation of human life in its earliest stages, 
it anticipates all other laws in time, and if 
properly enforced would supersede the neces- 
sity for nine-tenths of the laws of all nations. 
Other lawmakers propose to restrain or guide 
the evil passions and principles of men; she 
proposes to purify the waters at the fountain 
— suppress the beginnings of wrong, and train 
the child instead of imijrisoning or hanging 
the man. The substitution of lawmakers, 
teachers, governors, and executioners for par- 
ents, in the regulation of human society, has 
been the bane of its welfare in all ages. A 
child is the property, the trainable life of its 
parents, whom God holds responsible for its 
character. Parents are as much bound to 
form the characters of their children aright as 
they are to save them from malformation, star- 
vation, or death from any cause. Parents are 
the original sovereigns of the human race, and 
the real arbiters of its destiny. Let it be borne 
in mind that these rules are not so much an 



08 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

imagined direction as to how chidren should 
be governed as an after-description of how 
Mrs. Wesley's large family were governed. 
Their excellence was proved by successful ap- 
plication. Let it be further noted that these 
rules are not more to be valued for the specific 
directions they contain than for the evidence 
they afford of an order of family government 
so systematic as to be capable of being distinct- 
ly set down in writing. Some systematic fam- 
ily government must be administered, or the 
children will be ruined. Were God's primal 
law for training children obeyed, the world 
would be speedily transformed; the nations 
would know themselves no more. Does not God 
require all human beings to pass through child- 
hood for the specific purpose of having them 
trained? Shall the children of our race lose 
the divinest opportunities of their being 
through the neglect of their parents? Let all 
parents adopt Mrs. Wesley's rules or make 
better ones. Let a copy of them be framed 
and hung in every home. If not specially 
applicable in every family, they are so full of 



MKS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 89 

good suggestions that tliey can not fail to be 
helpful to every faithful parent. Let Susanna 
Wesley's code for the nursery be a talisman 
in every home. 

Through John and Charles Wesley this code 
has modified the world as no other of its kind 
has done. The mind that planned and execu- 
ted that code in her own home saw a kingdom 
shaken by its power before her death, and 
may now perchance look down from a higher 
sphere to see the face of Christendom chan- 
ging under the influence of the heavenly doc- 
trines which she taught her sons, and realize, 
what she could not while on earth, that those 
who believe in Jesus shall do greater works in 
his name than even Jesus ever did while he 
was on the earth. Well may Dr. Adam Clarke 
declare of the Wesley family: " Such a family 
I have never read of, heard of, or known ; nor 
since the days of Abraham and Sarah and Jo- 
seph and Mary of Nazareth has there ever been 
a family to which the human race has been 
more indebted." 

When Mrs. Wesley was dying she said to 



90 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

her children, six of whom were with her: 
" Children, as soon as I am released, sing a 
psalm of praise to God." They did so, and the 
echoes of that song are still multiplying among 
tlie grateful millions whom Methodism has 
blessed with the gosi)el throughout the world. 

Mrs. Wesley's rules for training her children 
are hereunto appended. They are creditable 
alike to her head and her heart. The " Moth- 
er of Methodism " could have left no more 
appropriate legacy to the Church than a state- 
ment of the " Dirfiiod " by which she trained 
its founders. l>y duly appreciating these rules 
we shall greatly benefit ourselves, ascribe wor- 
thy honor to her name, and preserve the fittest 
monument to her memory. They are thus 
stated by herself: 

" The children were always put into a regu- 
lar method of living in such things as they 
were capable of, from their birth, as in dress- 
ing, undressing, changing their linen, etc. 

" When turned of a year old - and some be- 
fore—they were taught to fear the rod and to 
cry softly; by which means they escaped abun- 



MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 91 

dance of correction they might otherwise have 
had, and that most odious noise of the crying 
of children was rarely heard in the hoase, but 
the family usually lived in as much quietness 
as if there had not been a child among them. 

"As soon as they were grown pretty strong 
tliey were confined to three meals a day. At 
dinner their little tables and chairs were set 
by ours, where they could be overlooked; and 
they were suffered to eat and drink as much as 
they would, but not to call for anything. If 
they wanted aught, they used to whisper to 
the maid that attended them, who came and 
spake to me; and as soon as they coul(,l handle 
a knife and fork they were set to our table. 
They were never suffered to choose their meat, 
but always made to eat such things as were 
provided for the family. 

"Mornings they had always spoon-meat, 
sometimes at night; but whatever they had, 
they were never permitted to eat at those meals 
of more than one thing, and of that sparingly 
enough. Drinking or eating between meals 
was never allowed unless in case of sickness, 



92 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

which seldom happened. Nor were they suf- 
fered to go into the kitchen to ask anything of 
the servants when they were at meat. If it 
was known they did, they were certainly pun- 
ished and the servants severely reprimanded. 

"At six, as soon as family prayers were over, 
they had their supper; at seven the maid 
washed them, and, beginning at the youngest, 
she undressed and got them all to bed by 
eight, at which time she left them in their 
several rooms awake; for there was no such 
thing allowed of in our house as sitting by a 
child till it fell asleep. 

"They were so constantly used to eat and 
drink what was given them, that when any of 
them was ill there was no difficulty in making 
them take the most unpleasant medicine, for 
they durst not refuse it, though some of them 
would presently throw it up. This I mention 
to show that a person may be taught to take 
anything, though it be never so much against 
his stomach. 

"In order to form the minds of children, 
the first thing to be done is to conquer their 



MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 93 

will, and bring them to an obedient temper. 
To inform the understanding is a work of time, 
and must with children proceed by slow de- 
grees, as they are able to bear it ; but the sub- 
jecting the will is a thing which must be done 
at once, and the sooner the better; for by neg- 
lecting timely correction they will contract a 
stubbornness and obstinacy which is hardly 
ever after conquered, and never without using 
such severity as would be as painful to me as 
to the child. In the esteem of the world they 
pass for kind and indulgent whom I call cruel 
parents — who permit their children to get 
habits which they know must be afterward 
broken. Nay, some are so stupidly fond as 
in sport to teach their children to do things 
which in a while after they have severely beat- 
en them for doing. Whenever a child is cor- 
rected it must be conquered, and this will be 
no hard matter to do if it be not grown head- 
strong by too much indulgenee. And when 
the will of a child is totally subdued, and it is 
taught to revere and stand in awe of the par- 
ents, then a great many childish follies and 



94 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

inadvertences may be passed by. Some should 
be overlooked and taken no notice of, and oth- 
ers mildly reproved; but no wilful transgres- 
sion ought ever to be forgiven cliildren with- 
out chastisement less or more, as the nature 
and circumstances of the ofifense require. 

" I insist on conquering the will of children 
betimes, because this is the only strong and 
rational foundation of a religious education, 
without which precept and example wil-l be 
ineffectual; but when this is thoroughly done, 
then a child is capable of being governed by 
the reason and piety of its parents till its own 
understanding comes and the princii)les of 
religion have taken root in the mind. 

" I can n(^t yet dismiss this subject. As 
self-will is the root of all sin and misery, 
so whatever cherishes this in children insures 
their after wretchedness and irreligion. What- 
ever checks and modifies it promotes their 
future happiness and piety. This is still more 
evident if we further consider that religion is 
nothing else than doing the will of God and 
not our own; that the one grand impediment 



MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 95 

to our temporal and eternal happiness being 
this self-will, no indulgence of it can be trivial, 
no denial unprofitable. Heaven or hell de- 
pends on this alone; so that the parent who 
studies to subdue it in his child w^orks togeth- 
er with God in renewing and saving a soul. 
The parent who indulges it does the devil's 
work — makes religion impracticable, salvation 
unattainable — and does all that in him lies to 
damn his child, soul and body, forever. 

"The children of this family w^ere taught, 
as soon as they could speak, the Lord's Prayer 
— which they were made to say at rising and 
bedtime constantly — to which as they grew 
bigger were added a short prayer for their par- 
ents and some collects, a short catechism and 
some portion of Scripture, as their memories 
could bear. 

" They were very early made to distinguish 
the Sabbatli from other days before they could 
well speak or go. They were as soon taught 
to be still at family prayers and to ask a 
blessing immediately after, which they used to 
do by signs before they could kneel or speak. 



96 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

'' They were quickly made to understand that 
they might have nothing they cried for. and 
instructed to speak handsomely for what tliey 
wanted. They were not suffered to ask even 
the lowest servant for aught without saying, 
'Pray, give me such a thing,' and the servant 
was chid if she ever let them omit that word. 
Taking God's name in vain, cursing and 
swearing, prof anenoss, obscenity, rude, ill-bred 
names, were never heard among them. Nor 
were they ever permitted to call each other 
by their proper names without the addition of 
brother or sister. 

" None of them were taught to read till five 
years old, except Kezzy — in whose case I was 
overruled — and she was more years learning 
than any of the rest had been months. The 
way of teaching was this: The day before a 
child began to learn the house was set in order, 
every one's work was appointed them, and a 
charge given that none should come into the 
room from nine till twelve or from two till 
five — which were our school-hours. One day 
was allowed the child wherein to learn its let- 



MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 97 

ters; and each of them did iii that time know 
all its letters, great and small, except Molly 
and Nancy, who were a day and a half before 
they knew them perfectly, for which I then 
thought them very dull; but since I have ob- 
served how long many children are learning 
the hornbook, I have changed my opinion. 
But the reason why I thought them so then 
was because the rest learned so readily, and 
Samuel, who was the first child I ever taught, 
learned the alphabet in a few hours. He was 
five years old on tlie 10th of February; the 
next day he began to learn, and as soon as he 
knew the letters began tlie first chapter of 
Genesis. He was taught to spell the first 
verse, then to read it over and over till he 
could read it ofPhand without any liesitation 
— so on the second, etc., till he took ten verses 
for a lesson, which he quickly did. Easter fell 
low [came late] that year, and by Whitsun- 
tide he could read a chapter very well ; for he 
read continually, and had such a prodigious 
memory that I can not remember ever to have 

told him the same word twice. What was yet 

7 



98 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

sti'anger, any word he had learned in his les- 
son he knew wherever he saw it, either in the 
Bible or any other book, by which means he 
soon learned to read an English author well. 

" The same method was observed with them 
all. As soon as they knew the letters they were 
put first to spell and read one line, then a verse 
— never leaving till perfect in their lesson, 
were it shorter or longer. So one or another 
continued reading at school-time without any 
intermission, and before we left the school each 
child read what he had learned that morning, 
and ere we parted in the afternoon what he 
had learned that day. 

"There was no such thing as loud talking 
or playing allowed of, but every one was kept 
close to their business for the six hours of 
school; and it is almost incredible what a child 
may be taught in a quartei' of a year by a vig- 
orous application, if it have but a tolerable 
capacity and good health. Every one of these 
— Kezzy excepted — could read better in that 
time than most of women can do as long as 
they live, 



MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 99 

" Kising out of their places or going out of 
the room was not permitted, unless for good 
cause; and running into the yard, garden, or 
street without leave was always esteemed a 
capital offense. 

" For some years we went on very well. 
Never were children in better order. Never 
were children better disposed to piety or in 
more subjection to their parents, till that fatal 
dispersion of them after the fire into several 
families. In those days they were left at full 
liberty to converse with servants — which be- 
fore they had always been restrained from — 
and to run abroad and play with any children, 
good or bad. They soon learned to neglect a 
strict observation of the Sabbath, and got 
knowledge of several songs and bad things 
which before they had no notion of. That 
civil behavior which made them admired when 
at home by all who saw them was in a great 
measure lost, and a clownish accent and many 
rude ways were learned, which were not re- 
formed without some difficulty. 

" When the house was rebuilt and the chil- 



100 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

dreii all brought home, we eutered upon a 
strict reform; and then was begun the custom 
of singing psalms at beginning and leaving 
school, morning and evening. Then also that 
of a general retirement at five o'clock was en- 
tered upon, when the oldest took the youngest 
that could speak, and the second the next, to 
whom they read the Psalms for the day and a 
chapter in the New Testament — as in the 
morning they were directed to read the Psalms 
and a chapter in the Old, after which they 
went to their private prayers before they got 
their breakfast or came in to the family. 

"There were several by-laws observed 
among us: 

"1. It had been observed that cowardice 
and fear of punishment often lead children 
into lying, till they get a custom of it which 
they can not leave. To prevent this, a law 
was made that whoever was charged with a 
fault, if they would ingenuously confess it, 
and promise to amend, should not be beaten. 
This rule prevented a great deal of lying. 

"2. That no sinful action— as lying, pilfer- 



Mrs. SUSANNA WESLEY. lOl 

ing, playing at church or on the Lord's day, 
disobedience, quarreling, etc. — should ever 
pass unpunished. 

"3. That no child should ever be chid or 
beat twice for the same fault; and if they 
amended, they should never be upbraided with 
it afterward. 

"4. That every signal act of obedience, es- 
pecially when it crossed upon their own incli- 
nations, should be always commended, and 
frequently rewarded according to the merits 
of the case. 

" 5. That if ever any child performed an act 
of obedience or did anything with an intention 
to please, though the performance was not 
well, yet the obedience and intention should 
be kindly accepted, and the child with swreet- 
nesB directed how to do better for the future. 

" 6. That propriety [ownership] be inviola- 
bly preserved, and none suffered to invade the 
property of another in the smallest matter, 
though it were but the value of a farthing or 
a pin, which they might take from the owner 
without — much less against — his consent. 



102 MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. 

" 7. That promises be strictly observed, and 
a gift once bestowed — and so the right passed 
away from the donor — be not resumed, but 
left to the disposal of him to wiiom it was 
given, unless it were conditional, and the con- 
dition of the obligation be not performed." 



I WONDER WHAT WERE CHILDREN MADE 
FOR. 

I WONDER what were children made for! 
AVhy, to be loved and trained and prayed for, 

And do their parents' will ; 
And whatever may l)e said of them, 
The best old folks were ma<le of them, 

And so God makes them still. 

When once of old high place was sought for, 
What was a little child then brought for, 

And seated mid the group? 
Thus Christ would humble high ambition, 
And honor those of low condition, 

And lift the childlike up. 

If still you are a little child then, 

Seek to be meek and true and mild then. 

And ready to obey ; 
For only such where'er you find them, 
Do always well the part assigned them. 

And that's enough to say. 



CHILDREN INVITED. 

Come children, to the gofpel feast, 

For such as you 'tis given; 
Come, even though you he the least, 

And eat the hread of heaven. 

"Suffer the little ones to come," 
The world's Redeemer said ; 

He calls you to a heavenly home; 
Come, then, be not afrai<l. 

He takes the babes into his arms, 

He blesses infant souls, 
He keeps them from a thousand harms, 

Their lives his love enfolds. 

You can not be too young to love 

A Saviour such as he, 
And when you reach the home above 

With him vou'll ever be. 



APPEAL TO CHILDREN. 

CHILDREN, have you thought, 
That you may Christians be, 

And please the gracious One who bought 
Your pardon on the tree ? 

That you may keep God's law, 

And do his holy will. 
And from his Book instruction draw 

To keep you faithful still? 

The children who obey 

Their parents in the Lord, 
They please their Maker every day 

And keep his holy word. 

Not reverend sire, nor sage, 
Nor rich, nor great, nor wise, 

Nor faithful ones of any age 
Are dearer in God's eyes. 

Repent then, while you may: 

Avoid correction's rod ; 
In early morn of childhood's day 

Give heart and life to God. 



THE STUDY OF THE NEAV TESTA- 
MENT IX GREEK. 

No greater lienor was ever conferred upon 
a hnman language than that whicli was l)e- 
stowed upon the Greek when the incarnate 
Son of God selected it to be the veiiicle of the 
highest truth to tlje human race. The Christ 
couhl have come at any lime and could, un- 
questionably, have spoken any language. It 
can not be regardotl an accident that he came 
when he did, and that he chose to convey from 
himself and those whom he inspired the gos- 
pel of eternal life to all succeeding ages in the 
nobh^ language of the Greeks. 

There are, doubtless, reasons too numerous 
and profound to be elaborated here, why the 
Greek should have been selected, above all 
other languages, to embalm forever God's last 
and most precious words to the sons of men. 

It can scarcely be regarded as partiality or 



KEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK. 107 

exaggeration to say that no language ever sur- 
passed, if any ever equaled, the Greek in sim- 
plicity, in strength, in comprehensiveness, and 
in spirituality of expression. As no people 
ever excelled the Greeks in depth and preci- 
sion of thought, so no language ever excelled 
theirs in clearness, fulness, and power. The 
Greek, too, was among the most flexible and 
musical of tongues, admitting a great variety 
of changes, both in the forms and in the order 
of its words, for reasons purely euphonic; so 
that its utterance might not tire the reader, 
the speaker, or the hearer. 

We may get much help even in reading our 
English Bible with propriety by studying the 
Greek. Wlio has not felt the difficulty of giv- 
ing the proper emphasis to the personal pro- 
nouns in reading the Bible? Now, in the 
Greek, when the pronoun is unemphatic it is 
never expressed, but is implied in the form of 
the verb; hence, whenever it is expressed in 
the Greek, it is more or less emphatic in the 
English, and should be made so to appear in 
the reading. 



108 NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK. 

The Greek verb expressed every conceiv- 
able form and relation of action, being, and 
suffering with a greater variety of moods and 
tenses than any other ancient language; while 
its article, employed with noun, pronoun, verb, 
participle, adjective, adverb, and alone, helped 
to furnish the writer or the speaker of Greek 
with an instrument of thought and of expres- 
sion which, for the perfect service of every 
mental power and the adequate portrayal of 
every mental process, was perhaps never 
equaled by any other language of earth. 
When Homer pictures the actions and pas- 
sions of men in immortal verse; when Socra- 
tes, Plato, and Aristotle moralize and philoso- 
phize with ahnost surperhuman beauty and 
depth of conception; when ^^^schilus, Euripi- 
des, and Sophocles transcend the sons of men 
in poetic grandeur of thought and in entran- 
cing richness of expression; when Xenophon 
details with simple elegance tlie story of some 
common events in a style of everlasting charm 
to men; or when Demosthenes riddles the 
crown intended for ^schines with w^ords be- 



NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK. 109 

fore bullets were in use, and keeps Philip and 
his army at bay by the thunder of his elo- 
quence before cannon were invented, we are 
convinced that if the gods would talk with 
mortals they would use no other language 
than the Greek. 

The discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Bous- 
sard, near the mouth of the Nile, in 1799, 
though apparently an accident, proved to be 
one of the most important events in the his- 
tory of letters. It was the means of discover- 
ing to modern understandings the mean- 
ing of the records of the most ancient nations, 
esi^ecially of the Egyptians, and also of con- 
ferring upon the Greek language the distin- 
guished honor of furnishing the key by which 
a great storehouse of mysteries was to be un- 
locked. 

This stone contained three inscriptions, 
each in a tongue differing from the others; 
one in the ancient hieroglyphic or priestly 
style, one in the demotic or people's style, and 
one in Greek. No man then living could read 
either of the first two; but the Greek was found 



]10 NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK. 

to be a translation of the other two, and so be- 
came the means of interpreting not only those 
two inscriptions, but also all other hiero- 
glyphic and demotic records then known and 
that might be discovered to the end of time. 
Thus, with one liand the Greek has brought 
to the moderns the lost treasures of ancient 
lore, and with the other she brings God's 
highest message to men, his holy AVord, of 
which she must forever remain the j)rimal con- 
servator for m11 who would rcc'eive it in tlie 
form indited by the Holy Ghost. 

The Septuagint is a translation of the Old 
Testament into Greek, made perhai)s ( for its 
origin is quite obscure) about three hundred 
years before Clirist. It is an invaluable treas- 
ure, giving us an interpretation of the Old 
Testament by competent Greek scholars at a 
very early day. It is a very significant fact 
that ([notations from the Old Testament in the 
New are almost invaiinbly taken from the 
Septuagint. Christ and his apostles quoted 
from it, and thereby sanctioned it. For sev- 
eral centuries after Christ it was read in the 



NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK. Ill 

synagogues, the early Church regarding it as 
of equal authority and inspiration with the 
Hebrew text. The Greek Church so regards 
it to this day. Thus the Greek language 
brings to us even the Old Testament in semi- 
original and divinely sanctioned form, so that 
one who knows Greek may read the entire 
Bible in that most sacred tongue. 

On some passages this version throws a very 
helpful light; as, when it is said tliat God 
hardened Pharaoh's heart, and, in the same 
connection, that Pharaoli hardened his own 
heart, the Greek uses different words for 
God's agency and for tliat of Pharaoh. AVhen 
Pharaoh, Bapvi/ei', presses himself against God, 
God, '^Kkapvvei indurates or hardens Pharaoh's 
heart. 

The multitude of those whose lack of edu- 
cation would forbid them to express an opin- 
ion on the subject have long opposed and de- 
cried the teaching of the Greek and Latin 
classics in our schools and colleges, and re- 
cently a few whose culture should entitle their 
opinions to respect have condemned the pur- 



112 NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK. 

suit of these studies as a useless waste of time 
and labor; but the great majority of scholars 
have continued to maintain their utility and 
to insist on their retention in every course of 
liberal education. 

How any one at all familiar with tlu^ ter- 
minology of the sciences can fail to appreciate 
aknowledg(^ of Gret^k is difficult to understand. 
Such words as *' physician," " botany," *' tele- 
graph," "telephone," "photograph," "optics," 
"acoustics," "electricity," "oxygen," and 
thousands of others show the Greek origin of 
the forms in which the wisest minds of the 
ages have chosen to fix and transmit the treas- 
ures of knowledge. The sum of all we know 
or may discover on the most important of all 
subjects is expressed in the single Greek de- 
rivative, fheoJo<iii; while lie who was God 
manifest in the llesh, though born a Hebrew, 
and in that language appropriately called Im- 
))Knn(el, was yet to be known and preached 
and worshiped through all ages under his 
Greek name, Jesus^ Saviour, (l7;o-ovs, healer); 
and this "his name shall endure forever," 



NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK. 113 

signifying his power to save (heal) his people 
from their sins. 

The indebtedness of the English language 
to the Greek for a very large number of most 
beautiful and expressive words is so great that 
only ignorance can underestimate it. By far 
the greater part of the technical terminology 
of all the sciences is composed of derivatives 
or transfers from the Latin and the Greek. 
As illustrating the copiousness of our drafts 
upon Greek for means of fluent expression in 
English we note that all the more than fifteen 
hundred words in our language beginning 
with "////" (with possibly a few exceptions) 
are derived from the Greek, and that every one 
of the almost five hundred words in our dic- 
tionaries beginning with "////(//" is derived 
from the single Greek word vSwp, signifying 
water. 

Several of the preceding remarks are appli- 
cable to the study of Greek in general; we 
come now to emphasize the importance of 
studying the Greek Testament in particular. 
He who would thoroughly know the mind of 



114 NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK. 

a writer must study the words wbicli lie has 
employed. Here are writings professing to 
reveal truths hitherto unknown. The words 
are Greek, and he who woukl fully catch their 
thought and feel their force must surely know 
the (Ireek. The primal form of linguistic ex- 
})ressiou is as the die that prints the truth 
upon the soul of the reader. No translation 
can be supposed to equal the original, unless 
we are to expect translators to be insjiired, as 
were the amanuenses of the Holy Ghost. 
There is something in the rcnj fiords of him 
who spake as never man spake which no Iniman- 
ly devised forms can ever perfectly reproduce. 
The Divine Spirit we know enabled men to 
speak all the languages of earth (as on the day 
of Pentecost), yet God chose to give his gospel 
to men in Greek. The Latin was at this time 
more extensively used and was spoken by the 
dominant nations of the earth. Yet the Holy 
Ghost, the master of all languages, selected 
the Greek, in which to fix and preserve God's 
everlasting covenant with men. But whatever 
may have been the reasons for putting the 



NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK. 115 

New Testament into Greek, the great question 
with us is: How may we best reach and realize 
the full power of its divine teaching? The 
apostle Paul declares that "all Scripture is 
given by insj)iration of God,""^ and Peter af- 
firms that " holy men of God spake as they 
were moved by the Holy Ghost," f and that the 
prophecies of old came not by the will or wish 
of any man. Paul, in writing to the Corin- 
thians, is more explicit still, assuring us that 
not only the matter, but also the words of his 
divine message were taught him by the Lord: 
" Which things also we speak, not in the words 
which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the 
Holy Ghost teacheth." I 

Since the apostle affirms that spiritual truth 
is conveyed in spiritual words, can we doubt the 
importance of studying the words if we would 
get the mind of the Spirit? There are forms 
of expression and turns of thought of which 

* 2 Timothy iii. 16. 

12 Peter i. 21. 

Jl Corinthians ii. 12, 13. 



116 NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK. 

no translation can adequately convey the force. 
The collocation of tlie words and tlie empha- 
sis required by the stylo often add great 
force to a passage read in the original Greek. 
A translation can possibly give but a single 
view of the thouglit of a text, while he who 
studies tin; original may derive multiplied im- 
pressions of increasing strength and beauty, 
as one who btdiolds a landscaj)e with leisurely 
and ])r()traete(l ga/e. Eaeli Greek word is 
usually rt'iidercd by a single English etjuiva- 
lent, but the reader of the Greek itself may 
have his conceptions of the meaning of a pas- 
sage deepened, varied, and enriched by the 
occurrence to his mind of half a dozen mean- 
ings of certain Greek words. The full force 
of this argument can be realized only by ex- 
periment. To know the joy of seeing one 
must see. One must read the New Testament 
in Greek to know the benefit of so doing. He 
who would know tlu^ thoughts of God most 
accurately must carefully study the words in 
which God has written his thoughts. "Water 
brought in a vessel may be far better than no 



NEW TESTAMENT IN GKEEK. 117 

water at all, but must ever be inferior to that 
drunk from the fountain itself. 

The labor required to familiarize oneself 
with the Greek will be amply repaid by its 
fruits. All Christians would be the better for 
the ability to read the New Testament in Greek, 
but every one who is to feed the flock of Glirist 
as a minister of the word of life should surely 
be most anxious to learn all that the orii^inal 
text would impart to a competent and studious 
reader. He should be able to draw the sin- 
cere milk of the word from the mother's breast, 
and not be compelled to take a substitute from 
a bottle. A translation is a photograph ; the 
original is the living man. Eeading a trans- 
lation is like looking at a cold and unchange- 
able painting; studying the original is like 
the satisfying contemplation of a landscape, 
whose varied richness and inexhaustible beau- 
ties are measured only by the penetrating 
power of the mind that beholds it. 

He who reads a translation stands at the 
door of the mansion, waiting to greet any who 
may be sent out; he who reads the original 



il8 NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK. 

enters witliiii and cultivates, at his pleasure, 
the acquaintance of the inmates of the loyal 
palace of truth. Some of the advantages of 
studying the original arc ol)vious; others arc 
as elusive as the operations of the spirit that 
constitutes the essence of a word. Remember 
tluit the Master said: " The words that 1 speak 
unto you, they are spirit and they are life." 

We here introduce a few illustrations of the 
suggestions to he L^otten hy study ini^ the 
Greek texts: " J (' ;my man ///// <l(t his will," 
etc. The Greek is Bikijiroiciv, which means ^A'- 
.s/;y.s', Irishes, or is tviUimi to do his will. "The 
goodman of the house." OtVoSccrTrorT;? simply 
iHiisfer, neither yooJ, as is implied in 7r>o^/man, 
nor />(f(l, as might be inferred from our word 
despot derived from the latter part of the Greek 
compound. 

"Add to your faith rirfnc :'' Greek, d/jcT>yV, 
courage. 

"A clieerful giver, l\ap6v, simply rlmr/ul or 
irilliiif/. The Greek does not precisely corre- 
spond in meaning with the English word Jiila- 
r ions J derived from it. 



NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK. 119 

" Godliness." Not God-Uke-ness, but Eva-efSeia, 
reverence, profound adoration toward God. 

"Anathema." A thing accursed or devoted to 
destruction. " Maran atiia " — " Our Lord Com- 
eth." The words are Syriac. " Conversation" 
— 'Ava(iTpo(f>T] — conduct J is never confined to the 
idea of words as it is in present usage. 

"Slew all the children," tov^ TratSa?, male 
children. "Strain (ft a gnat;" strain out a 
gnat, Si'jXi^d). '^Qukk and powerful " — /. e., alive 
and full of energy, ^wv. Misled by tliis Eng- 
lish word, a writer recently published a long 
article in a newspaper to prove that we should 
expect sudden or instantaneous results from 
God's word. 

" The ax is laid unto the root of the trees " — 
/. e., lies at, Ketrat. "For it was not the time of 
figs." Let the smooth l)reathing of the ou be 
changed into the rough breathing, and it be- 
comes ov, and the passage may be translated, 
icJie)i indeed it was the time of figs. This con- 
jecture of my own, if allowable, certainly 
throws light on a very mysterious passage of 
scripture. 



120 NEW TESTAMENT IN GKEEK. 

" Easily besetting sin," — rather, close-fitting 

garment^ Ifxariov for afiaprtav. 

Should secular schools ever exclude the 
Greek from their courses of instruction, which 
they are not likely to do, Christian schools can 
never follow such an example. Christian 
scholars must ever delight in studying the 
New Testament in the Greek, and the word of 
our God in that divinely selected tongue must 
forever remain the sacred classic of the 
Church. To abandon the Greek would be to 
forsake the only standard by which the hun- 
dreds of translations into the various languages, 
dialects, and idioms of earth can be verified, 
harmoiiized, and authenticated as the word of 
God. Let us study— study Greek, that we 
may be able thoroughly to understand and 
rightly to teach the word of God. The time 
has passed, if it ever existed, when sanctified 
ignorance in a public teacher could even seem 
to be edifying to men ; and it certainly can no 
longer be acceptable to God, when he has 
placed the means of knowledge within the 
reach of every student. Let us search the sa- 



JfEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK. l21 

cred Book in the original Greek, as for hid 
treasure; and familiarize ourselves with the 
very words which the Spirit used, that we may 
be filled with the spirit which they convey. 

We need not only preachers and teachers 
whose hearts are aflame with the fire cv.ight 
from the living words of the Master, but we 
need also profound expositors and learned ex- 
egetes who can meet the enemy in the gate 
and reprove the ignorance, the presumption, or 
the gracelessness of those advocates of higher 
(or lower) criticism who would rob mankind 
of the water of life by picking holes in every 
vessel in which it is carried. 



THE SOUL'S prayp:r. 

Fatiikr, I ask one gift of thee, 
Deny not that one gift to nie, 
Thy giving can not waste thy store, 
Nor can withholding make it more. 

Since thou dost give and not upbraid, 
Thy suppliant need not l)e afraid; 
Thy riches all are to be given — 
Thou wilt not e'en deny us heaven. 

1 need not tell thee my re(iuest. 
For thou canst read it in my breast; 
Grant me, I pray, the unsi>oken boon, 
Turn thou my midnight into noon. 

Make me, O Lord, what I should be, 
And give me all thou hast for me; 
The fulness of thy nature give. 
That I henceforth in thee may live. 

The night is gone, the death is past, 
My soul finds life in thee at last; 
Infinite joy thou givest me. 
Infinite praise I'd give to thee ! 

A slave to sin, I lingered long, 
Salvation now is all my song! 
My soul, exulting in my Lord, 
Finds all her prayer in Christ is heard. 



cu 



WE MISS OUR FATHER EVERYWHERE * 

We miss liim in the corner where 
Now vacant sits the old armchair, 
We miss him when the meal is spread, 
We miss him when the grace is said. 
We miss him at the hour of prayer, 
We miss our Father everywhere. 

The world looks now no more the same, 
Its bright things all seem cold and tame, 
Its gladness mocks our lonely woe. 
And taunts our grief where'er we go; 
No sound is sweet, no scene is fair. 
We miss our Father everywhere. 

I miss him on my morning walk 

I miss his wise, observant talk ; 

At evening hour I walk alone, 

Since he who walked with me is gone ; 

The fields and Woods are sad and bare — 

I miss my Father everywhere. 

In vain we search for him we've lost, 
We can not pass the stream he's crossed ; 
But while our hearts throb out his name 

* Written upon the death of my father, Dr. J. E, P. lluiuii- 
itt, who died at Turin, Ga., Maich 7, 1SS4. 



124 WE MISS OUR FATHER EVERYWHERE. 

We hear a kindly voice proclaim: 

" Weep not my children, God is near; 

A home of peace awaits you here." 

Then ^ight the fire when day's work's through 
As Father long was wont to do, 
And let its glow the orphans cheer 
When they at eve shall gather near; 
His spirit, too, shall join with ours. 
Communing tiiere with heavenly powers. 

Around the home-hearth still we'll meet 
And seek for strength at Jesus' feet. 
There wiping oft affection's tears 
New hope shall spring for future years; 
Tliere we shall prove the power of prayer — 
Our Father's God will still be there. 



NOISE AS A BEAIN-DEVELOPEK 

Little had I suspected, till recently, that 
while the propensity to " make a noise in the 
world" is characteristic of most energetic 
men, the noise-making of all healthy children 
is not only natural, but is perhaps physically 
necessary to the highest develox^ment of their 
brains. Every child is instinctively a noise- 
maker, and my theory is that certain kinds 
of noise are powerfully promotive of brain- 
growth. The voice, the ear, and the brain 
are by no means independent of each other; 
but vocal chords, auricular structure, and 
high-wrought brain for thought are all joined 
in special and mutual helpfulness. 

Human life, with reference to our inquiry, 
may be divided into three periods: (1) the 
period of uproarious noise-making; (2) the 
period of silent work; (3) the period of still- 
ness and decadence. In the first, the child 



126 NOISE AS A BRAIN-DEVELOPER. 

lives in ceaseless noise and perpetual motion; 
in the second, man studies, works, and at- 
tends to business, avoiding noise and utilizing 
motion; in the third, both noise and motion 
lose their charms, and stillness is courted, 
while enfeebling age lulls man to his final 
sleep. 

Men are so constituted that all their pow- 
ers can not be equally active at the same 
time; some must rest while others work. 
The chief function of a chikl is to grow. 
The entire body, including the brain, should 
grow rapidly in child liood. One great i3ro- 
moter of growth is motion. Chemical de- 
composition and recomposition of particles, 
adjustment of molecular elements, enlarge- 
ment and increase of strength in all parts of 
the body are the result of activity. And 
what motion is to the body in general, sound 
is to the brain in particular, the brain being 
precluded by its surroundings from the effects 
of motion on other parts of the body. It can 
scarcely be questioned that the exercise of 
each and all of the five bodily senses has a 



NOISE AS A BRAIN-DEVELOPER. 127 

great effect in developing the capacities of 
the brain for its varied kinds of work. The 
impinging of light upon the eye affects the 
])rain through the optic nerve. The contact 
and movement of sand upon the tender skin 
of a child produces not only exquisite pleas- 
ure through the sense of touch, but also a 
quickening of perceptivity and of general 
bodily consciousness. All children should 
have sand beds to play in. 

That the exercise of the sense of hearing is 
essentially connected with the higher powers 
of the brain may be inferred from the fact that 
the auditory ganglia of the brain are devel- 
oi:)ed along with and usually in proportion to 
the intelligence of the animal. In the cod- 
fish, for instance, the optic and olfactory 
ganglia are distinctly shown, with the cere- 
bral lobes and the cerebellum; while here, as 
in most reptiles and even in rabbits and 
birds, the auditory ganglia are almost rudi- 
mentary. Indeed, the marvelously complex 
apparatus of the sense of hearing in the 
higher animals seems to demonstrate the 



128 NOISE AS A BRAIN-DEVELOPER. 

eminent importance of the power of hearing 
to the functions of the brain. 

The effect of mere sound, regardless of its 
signilicauce, would be to develop the brain 
not so much in size as in molecular structure 
and in functional capacity, as the seat of 
sensations and the author of movements. 
This I hold to be the easiest possible mode of 
enhancing the thinking power of the brain. 
Should a child strongly exert his mental 
powers in order to increase the thinking ca- 
pacity of his brain, he would thereby in large 
degree suspend the normal activity of parts of 
his body, restrict growth, and injure his health ; 
as may be seen in the case of young children 
who are excessively fond of study or are too 
much pressed to books. Noise exercises the 
brain without tiring it, as play does the body. 
The inrush of sound through the auditory ap- 
paratus to the brain quickens and enhances its 
powers, as play does those of the body. 

It is said that no two particles of matter 
are in actual contact. Perhaps those of the 
best brains come nearest to touching that 



NOISE AS A BRAIN-DEVELOPEE. 129 

they may present the highest possible degree 
of vibratility. The effect of multitudinous 
vocal sounds, to which no attention is paid, 
seems to be to promote such an adjustment of 
the particles of the brain as shall qualify it for 
higher grades of intellectual work and for the 
authorship of more graceful muscular move- 
ments. Sound-waves from without and heart- 
pulses from within conspire to j^romote that 
exquisite vibratility in the millionary gos- 
samers of the brain which make it the inscru- 
table mystery of science, the miracle of mira- 
cles among the works of God. 

The scientific theory of sound lends itself 
readily to the confirmation of these views. 
While waves of light are transverse, waves of 
sound are longitudinal — /. r., in the direction 
of the motion of the wave. Hence, waves of 
sound would be eminently calculated to af- 
fect decidedly the delicate matter of the brain 
by means of the impulses which would reach 
it through the ear. And does not the brain 
respond to the contributions which sounds 

have made to its thinking capacity by fabri- 
9 



130 NOISE AS A BRAIN-DEVELOPER. 

eating its very thoughts in sounds? Does 
not consciousness reveal the fact that we not 
only think in words, but that the mind formu- 
lates those words to itself, in their last phys- 
ical analysis, in mere sounds? Repeat mental- 
ly a familiar passage of literature, and you have 
no vision of the shapes or numbers of the 
letters or words, but the mind runs through 
the series of appropriate sounds whereby the 
thought is expressed. Do we not, then, think 
in sounds? The truth of this theory would 
demand not only appropriate noise, but good 
hearing organs in order to the highest intel- 
lectuality. And do we not find the congeni- 
tally deaf not only dumb, but much restricted 
in their mental capacities? Would not chil- 
dren of good hearing be greatly lessened in 
mental activity if reared in silence? 

But we need not now invade the realms of 
the anatomist or of the metaphysician. We 
may confidently expect future investigations 
to show that certain meaningless sounds im- 
pinging on the matter of the brain exert a pow- 
erful ejBfect upon the intellectuality of man. 



NOISE AS A BKAIN-DEVELOPER. 131 

Let as ratlier look at the phenomena of child- 
hood, as a period of noise-making, comparing 
it with the same period in the lives of brutes. 
Who ever knew the command, " Stop your 
noise, children?" to fail to .kill all the joy of 
the rompers, if it did not stop the play 
altogether? To forbid the motions and the 
noises of children is to suppress the foun- 
tains of vitality within them. Yet noise is 
no essential part of play. It is only intellec- 
tual, human young that must play noisily, or 
not at all. The young of almost all lower 
animals play, but they play for the most part 
silently. This silence in the young of wild 
animals may be accounted for by the instinct 
of self-preservation, lest noise should betray 
them to their foes. But this reason will not 
account for the noiseless sports of the young 
of domestic animals. Lambs, kids, colts, and 
calves evidently enjoy their noiseless play, 
and puppies at times give only slight pre- 
monitions that they will be loud barkers 
some day, by their half-suppressed guttural 
laugh-grunts in play. 



132 NOISE AS A BRAIN-DEVELOPER. 

The young of birds seem too mucli taken 
up with the work of digestion while full-fed 
during the growing period, or with the pangs 
of hunger when starved to lighten them for 
flight as they approach maturity, to think 
much about play. The cries of the nestling, 
which, by revealing its whereabouts, liave 
brought death to many a hapless birdling, 
have in them nothing of the gladness of play. 
Only the child, the prince among animals, 
free, fearless, and divinely intellectual, is pre- 
eminently a noise-maker in all his play; inso- 
much that we may say, the more noise he 
makes the happier he is, and — may we not 
add? — the more intellectual he becomes. 

But this propensity to stir the aerial ocean 
round into a dinning tempest of sound in 
order to their highest satisfaction, though 
peculiar to the human species, is not con- 
fined to little children. College boys, when 
at liberty, are notoriously vociferous except 
when engaged in schemes whose execution 
demands the secrecy of silence. College 
*' cries" are becoming more and more uni- 



NOISE AS A BRAIN-DEVELOPER. 133 

versal and uproarious as intellectuality ad- 
vances. AVlien the sentimental collegian saws 
with his fiddle bow through hours wearisome 
to all but himself, he is doubtless wearing 
off the rngosities of his cranial convolu- 
tions, preparatory to the due realization and 
expression of the tenderer affections of his 
heart. Those sandpapering sounds adjust 
his brain to the softer emotions of his soul, 
and he is a different man forever after. 

This universal propensity to noise-making 
can not be regarded as an accident, much less 
as an expression of a vicious desire to sur- 
prise, annoy, or alarm others. It doubtless 
finds its deep and sufiicient explanation in the 
l)hysiology of the brain. 

Those schools, perhaps they should be 
styled scholastic prisons, where too much 
stillness is required and too much silence is 
exacted of the growing child have often pro- 
duced effects the very opposite of those in- 
tended by parents and teachers, and have 
tended rather to make dull machines than 
lively thinkers; while, perhaps, loud-studying 



134 NOISE AS A BRAIN-DEVELOPER. 

schools have made up in general brain-de- 
velopment what they lacked in special and 
technical mind-training. Even a blow upon 
the ear, not severe enough to injure the or- 
gan internally, has, in possible instances, 
produced far better effects upon the brain 
than the terai)er of the administrator wouhl 
allow to be expected upon the heart of the 
child. If chiklren do not live by noise, it is 
largely by noise they prove they are alive. 
Scotch law declares that if a child does not 
cry load enough to bo heard it is never alive 
at all. 

While I was writing this essay three of the 
prettiest little girls marched unceremoniously 
into my study, each holding one of McGinty's 
babies in her hand, 

And thoy blew and they blew and they blew till 
I found all my protests were utterly futile. 

What could I do, but rejoice in their joy, 
recognize the happy and unexpected demon- 
stration of my theory, and congratulate the 
parents on the infallible promise of intel- 



NOISE AS A BEAIN-DEVELOPER. 135 

lectuality in their children? From this view 
of the question it should be expected that 
noisy children would excel in manifestations 
of mental power. And who can say they do 
not? Are not the children of negroes, of In- 
dians, and of all other unintellectual races by 
far less noisy in play and elsewhere than the 
children of the Caucasian race? The former 
often in their frolics remind one of the mute 
dulness of young brutes. 

How much to be regretted it is that all the 
sore-nerved mothers and thousands of others 
who through the ages have been afflicted and 
tormented by the ever-varying, never-ceasing, 
and irrepressible babblings, rompings, roar- 
ings, and thunderings of playing children 
did not know that all these noises were not 
only proofs, presages, and p/romoters of high 
intellectuality, but were really essential agents 
in producing the greatest minds of the world! 
Only think, that all the bawlings of all the 
bawlers that ever bawled were eminently pro- 
motive of mind-growth in the bawlers! The 
very thought is a balm to the ears of adult 



136 NOISE AS A BRAIN-DEVELOPER. 

humanity, and turns millionary torments into 

joys. 

Then let the children loudly play 
And every bawler have his day. 
The bawling thrills the brain within, 
And thought-power grows amid the din. 



THE WEATHER AND I. 

The weather and I could never agree ; 
Just why this was so, I never could see, 

1 When the weather was dry I wished it would rain,'^ 

And when it was warm I clamored for cool- 
To quarrel with him was simply ray rule. 

I warred with the weather for many long years, 
I found fault with him and he pinched my ears; 

2 Now why should the weather afflict us with pain? 

'Twas always the wrong sort of weatlier for me — 
My hahit forever his wrong side to see. 

So, when 1 was pleased, and v/hen I was not, 
The weather kept changing from cold back to hot ; 

3 An unruly fellow he surely must be! 

I cowered before his on-sweepirg blast, 
And found I was under the weather at last. 

Oh, then, T bethought me, with him I'll agree, 
And the wisdom of all his changes I'll see— 

4 Since I can't make him submissive to me; 

In sunshine or showers, hot or cold, I will say. 
What beautiful weather ! a very fine day ! 

*Thc inimbercd lines may be read as a stanza. 



138 THE WEATHER AND I. 

How gladsome the sunshine! how sweet are the 
showers! 

The heat and the cold are the heavenly powers ; 
5 O shame that I ever found fault with my friends! 

They fill all the earth with fruits and with flow- 
ers, 

And show us God's thoughts, far higher than 
ours. 

Shall I ever again of the weather complain? 
The worst-seeming days are good in the main; 
f> Could I make them better for (iod's gracious ends? 
Each day is the best that could possibly be, 
To those wlio have eyes its blessings to see. 



A SATIRE ON UNBELIEF. 

The world thus far has banked on truth, 

As well became its artless youth ; 

But now she feels that she's grown wise, 

And boldly proves the power of lies. 

A fiction's been for centuries told 

Of Eve's and Adam's sin of old, 

How they transgressed the rule of heaven 

And forth were from the garden driven ; 

Of how they fell from God's good grace, 

And sank the souls of all their race. 

Long after that, we hear it said, 

A covenant was with Abraham made 

By which he was to serve the Lord, 

And God was pledged to be his God, 

And all his seed were to be blessed. 

And all the earth should be possessed 

By one descended from his line 

Who should with heavenly virtues shine. 

So, when the years had rolled away. 

The writers of this story say, 

A child was born, a wondrous child. 

On whom a virgin mother smiled, 



140 A SATIRE ON UNBELIEF. 

King of the Jews and God's own Son, 

Jesus, tlie Clirist, the Holy One, 

Who brought a gracious plan from heaven 

By whicli men's sins might be forgiven. 

He taught and wrought and died to save, 

And conquered sin, hell, and the grave; 

He claimed the world as all his own. 

And said its praise his name should crown. 

His followers say he went to heaven 

Till what he taught tlie world should leaven. 

Science now late her head exalts 

Proclaiming all this story false. 

The supernatural can't be true, 

'Twould all the fixed laws undo. 

Yet Jesus' doctrines widely spread, 

They're to the souls of men as bread ; 

Wise men say they can not doubt them — 

They could not live or die without them; 

Honor and truth spring from^their sway, 

Our thoughts are shaped by them to-day. 

Obeying them all lives are blest, 

Of moral fruits they yield the best, 

From strength to strength their votaries go. 

Bounds to their empire none may know. 

Jesus is worshiped everywhere, ' 

His name gives form to every prayer, 

All those who follow him do right. 

As guided by unearthly light, 



A SATIRE ON UNBELIEF. 141 

While love and joy and all good will 
The lives of his disciples fill. 
Yea, strange to tell, we see this day- 
He holds the world heneath his sway. 
The years are numbered from his birth, 
And Cliristians rule the spacious earth, 
The nations that confess him Lord 
Could sweep the world of Satan's horde. 
If lies thus take earth's ills away 
Then may these lies forever stay. 
How strange is this, could truth do more — 
The truth that infidels adore? 



THE FOKMEK DAYS AND THESE. 

"Say not thou, What is the cause that the 
former days were better than these? for thou 
dost not inquire wisely concerning this." 
(Eccl. vii. 10.) Had Solomon written noth- 
ing more than this weighty warning against 
forming erroneous oj)iuions on a question 
which through the ages involves alike the 
honor of God and the w^elfare of man, he 
would deserve a place among the wisest of our 
race. 

Were the former days really better than 
these, or do they only seem so? Our object 
in this essay will be to show how and why, 
even though they were not better, there will 
ever be a tendency in many minds to think 
that they were, and yet that the evidence is 
decidedly in favor of the present w^hen com- 
pared with the past. 

Among those especially who have passed 



FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 143 

the meridian of life, the opinion is apt to pre- 
vail that whatever pertains to tlie welfare of 
man is on the decline. The seasons appear 
to them to be growing more severe, the heat 
more intense, the cold more intolerable, while 
all malignant elements combine in unwonted 
ways to ruin our peace. To them, every form 
of evil seems to be on the increase, and the 
good to be everywhere pushed to the wall. 
The situation is sad and the prospect gloomy. 
If the world is not really on the "easy de- 
scent to hell," it is honestly feared by many 
that it is nearly approaching the verge of that 
perilous declivity. The sadness of those who 
view things thus is intensified by the thought 
of the past. " The former days were better 
than these," say they. " Give us back the 
good old days, or we must go down in sorrow 
to our graves." How far such views and feel- 
ings as these, affecting as they do thousands 
of the best people, are warranted by facts, 
and how far they result from the conditions 
and operations of their own minds, is a ques- 
tion well worthy of investigation. 



144 FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 

In what respects, then, is it thought that 
the former days were better? Surely none 
believe that the past had any advantage over 
the present in the useful arts or in the prac- 
tical sciences. Within the present century 
new applications of steam as a motive power 
have revolutionized the manufacturing and 
commercial operations of the world, increas- 
ing beyond all anticipation the physical com- 
forts and enjoyments of life, and wonderfully 
facilitating transportation and rapid and ex- 
tensive intercommunication among men. 
The use of gas and of electricity as illumi- 
nators has furnished guiding and protecting 
light to thousands of cities that had pre- 
viously been accustomed to sit in dangerous 
darkness when sun and moon were out of 
sight. Electricity has been made to run on 
obedient errands over lines constructed and 
located with marvelous skill and enterprise, 
bearing and delivering messages of thought 
to the most distant parts of the world with 
such speed and accuracy as to almost annihi- 
late space, and amazingly transcending all 



FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 145 

previous conception of possibility. The gov- 
ernment of a nation, located at its capital, 
whence diverging and ramifying telegraphic 
wires sj^read like network over its surround- 
ing domains, may constitute itself a grand 
sensorium, almost as quickly conscious as a 
human brain of any important change in even 
the most distant part of the body politic. As 
a motive power it works like a magician, and 
is superseding even steam itself as a mover of 
the machinery of the world. 

Astronomers have pushed their inquiries 
into distant space, discovering new worlds and 
systems of worlds; have given special atten- 
tion to the sun, and by the aid of the spectro- 
scope have been enabled to read a revelation 
of the elementary constituents of the great 
king of day written by his own beams. Ge- 
ologists, too, have been searching the depths 
of the earth and are beginning to read the 
chronicles of creation that have been buried, 
but not lost, for uncalculated ages, from 
leaves of the great earth-volume that had 

never been turned before. 
10 



146 FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 

Indeed, in all knowledge we have been 
progressing, and Mr. Edison, tlie wizard of 
tlie nineteenth century, is almost daily sur- 
prising the world by some invention or dis- 
covery in the realm of science. 

Neither in the extent and variety of learn- 
ing, nor in its skilful application to the pur- 
poses of life, is the present age inferior to any 
that preceded it. AVherein, then, is the world 
thought to be retrograding? In moral status 
— in the power and prevalence of truth and 
righteousness, we are told. The preaching is 
not so powerful nor the singing so inspiring 
as they once were. Peoi)le are neither so 
good nor so hai)py as they were in former 
years. Men are lapsing from the faith of 
their fathers and losing confidence in the 
teachings of the Bible, while diabolical wick- 
edness of many kinds prevails. We have 
fallen upon evil times. 

Are these really facts? We have two sour- 
ces of evidence, history and experience. The 
testimony of history is neither meager nor 
doubtful. Universal tradition corroborates 



FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 147 

the brief Biblical account of a flood by which 
the Almighty swept from the earth a vast 
population whose wickedness had become in- 
tolerable, thereby not only preventing the 
further increase of their ungodliness, but for- 
ever hiding from the generations to come all 
special knowledge of a people the particulars 
of whose history would have been an ever- 
recurring suggestion to sin. Notwithstanding 
this, wickedness of the grossest kind became 
shockingly prevalent among all nations pre- 
vious to the coming of Christ. Earthquakes, 
famines, and pestilences were penalties which 
demonstrated the enormity of men's crimes. 
Pharaoh, Sodom, Korah, and many others 
evidence a degree of criminality as then prev- 
alent of which we can now form no adequate 
conception. 

The political history of the world for many 
centuries is little else than an account of the 
animosities, strifes, and murders of rival prin- 
ces; the oppression or enslavement of their 
subjects, and the wholesale destruction of 
their enemies. More men, in proportion to 



148 FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 

the populatioD, often lost their lives by pri\-ate 
feuds or public wars then, in a few years, than 
now perish from the same causes in a century. 
Social and personal morals were exceedingly 
depraved. Woman was universally enslaved 
and abused by the brutal power of tyrannical 
man; children in some of the most enlight- 
ened nations were taught to steal; revolting 
scenes of bloodshed and horror were every- 
where regarded as the most delightful enter- 
tainments for all sexes and classes of society; 
while the hope of drinking their enemies' blood 
from bowls made of their skulls was their very 
highest idea of felicity in the world to come. 

But lest we be thought to draw our evidence 
from too remoli^ a period, let us look at the 
state of the world after the more general 
spread of the gospel. It is true the picture 
seems somewhat modified, yet it is sufficiently 
dark. "Wars and manifold wickednesses claim 
a large share of attention. Even the Church 
of Christ becomes often involved in such 
bloody struggles with heretics or heathen that 
we might reasonably infer that it was her 



FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 149 

chief aim to destroy, instead of to save, men's 
lives. It is scarcely a hundred years since the 
Christian world arrived at the conclusion that 
persecution of heretics was not the noblest 
mark of the divinity of the Church. The dark 
ages — dark not only in literature, but in mor- 
als — spread their gloomy centuries like a wall 
of blackness between us and the apostles' day; 
centuries which surely no sane man could wish 
to have repeated in the world's history. But 
during the last few centuries new and power- 
ful agencies for good have been abroad. The 
invention of the art of printing has greatly 
facilitated the multiplication and lessened the 
cost of copies of the Holy Scriptures, and the 
Bible, released from the thraldom of conceal- 
ment in which it had lain for ages, has gone 
forth a radiant luminary into the kingdoms of 
darkness and the nations have been quickened 
and blessed by its heavenly light. 

The invention of railroads has greatly facil- 
itated all kinds of transportation, men have 
mingled with each other, knowledge of every 
kind has greatly increased, and civilized man 



150 FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 

seems to have been advanciug in wisdom and 
virtue. He who jutlges the course of a stream 
by objects circling in eddies along its banks 
would be apt to mistake the direction of the 
current. The battle between good and evil 
should be judged by the movements of nations 
and the moral trend of the centuries. Let us 
note a few signs: 

1. From the time when Constantino marched 
to victory under the banner of the cross, Chris- 
tianity has deepened and widened her power 
till Christian nations have now become the 
dominant nations of the world. 

2. Multiplying millions are being annually 
expended in Christian charities, churches, 
schools, hospitals, and asylums; all govern- 
ments are being mitigated, and prison disci- 
pline is everywhere being humanized, through 
the intluence of the name of Christ. 

3. The spirit and practise of war are greatly 
dhninished. With the amazing increase in 
means of transportation, which might have 
multiplied wars and intensified contiicts, na- 
tions have learned forbearance, which is evi- 



>;:> 



FORMEK DAYS AND THESE. 151 

denced by the numerous arbitrations of na- 
tional disputes and the urgent proposal of 
treaties of universal and permanent arbitra- 
tion between all nations. 

4 Never before did Cliristians make such 
efforts to save the heathen as are now being 
made. Certainly one of the most marked fea- 
tures of the latter half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury is its missionary feature. 

5. Among the greatest obstacles to the prog- 
ress of Christianity have been the schisms and 
strifes among its professors. The failure of 
the Church to keep herself pure and peaceable 
hindered her spread more than all opposition 
from without. The errors, corruptions, and 
tyranny of Romanism gave rise to Protestant- 
ism. Limitation of mind and selfishness of 
heart gave ignorance and ambition a devilish 
sway in the Church, till even the lieathen re- 
jected the caricature of Christianity as a sub- 
stitute for the powerless rites of their ancestral 
religions. But now we see the day -not of 
perfect harmony, but of milder strife — when 
Churches contend less for dogma and more 



152 FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 

for Christ, less for victory and more for the 
salvation of souls. Surely the Church of to- 
day presents less of the repulsive and more of 
the attractive and convincing before the eyes 
of the unbelieving world than did the Church 
of two or five hundred years ago. 

Thus we perceive that a general survey of 
the past forces upon us the conclusion that 
the world has not been moving backward. 
There may have been temporary periods of 
exception, but the general tendency and move- 
ment have been from bad to good, from dark- 
ness unto light. 

Indeed, we are ever liable to learn less than 
the truth concerning the evils of the past. 
The natural preference of the mind for good 
rather than evil; the injunction of the classic 
motto, " Nothing concerning the dead unless 
it be good;" and the natural tendency of men 
to speak favorably of their own achievements 
and characters — authorize us to expect history 
to give us a somewhat flattering picture of the 
past. The bearer of evil tidings can give no 
pleasure by his tale, but is liable to be regard- 



FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 153 

ed as was the man who ran to tell David of 

Absalom's death. The historian often looks 

through friendship's j)artial eyes or charity's 

fault-hiding evil. It is hard to learn the whole 

truth about the past. History is apt to show it 

With mentioned faults a little dwarfed, 
And many faults untold. 

But perhaps we have misconceived the po- 
sition of those with whom we would reason. 
They do not mean to say that ancient were 
better than modern times, but that during the 
period of their experience the times have cer- 
tainly not improved; and they sigh for the 
" good old days." The world, the Church, and 
all things seemed to them better a few decades 
ago than now. The children were more obe- 
dient and respectful, the parents more discreet 
and careful, the preachers were more pious 
aud profound, the laws were better executed, 
and even the water they drank from grandfa- 
ther's spring was colder and sweeter than any 
the earth affords in these degenerate days. 

There is something so natural and at the 
same time so saddening in this state of mind 



154 FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 

that its philosophy well deserves our investi- 
gation. Let us examine it. Were the bygone 
days which we hear so much eulogized really 
superior to these in which we live, or do they 
only seem soV AVe think the superiority of 
the past is only seeming. How, then, does this 
seeming become a most affecting reality to 
many wise people who would not be unjustly 
censorious of the times in which they live? 
1. A poet tells us: 

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view. 
And clothen the mountain in its azure hue. 

Doubtless the appearance of other matters 
than mountains often depends upon the dis- 
tance of time as well as of territory over 
which they are viewed. Were we nearer to 
those distant days, they would not seem the 
same to us. A closer inspection would reveal 
many deformities not perceived in the dis- 
tance, even as a mountain range, which looks 
wdien seen afar soft and smooth as the sky, 
becomes, on a near approach, a rough and 
craggy barren, quite unlovely to behold. 



FORMEE DAYS AND THESE. 155 

2. Tlie source of this error may be the bet- 
ter appreciated by bearing in mind the fact 
that memory instinctively retains that which 
is good, and as naturally rejects that which is 
evil. The mind treasures the remembrance 
of all things good and pleasant as a constant 
source of joy. Though duty and necessity 
often conspire to produce a habit of dwelling 
upon the evils of the present, collecting their 
evidences and brooding over their effects, in- 
terest and pleasure incline us to forget the 
evil of the past and remember the good. The 
oft-recurring vexations and disappointments 
of the present drive the mind to seek solace 
amid the delights which memory has saga- 
ciously stored away in her treasury. The 
fresh scratch of a brier upon our person pro- 
duces more present dissatisfaction than the 
cicatrix of a dangerous wound which has long 
since healed. The petty annoyances of a sin- 
gle day of ordinary life are more trying to 
even a patient spirit than are the remembered 
horrors of a score of hard-fought battles. 
There is a sort of joy in the recollection of 



156 FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 

ills that are past, arising no doubt from the 
thought that we have esca^^ed from them and 
are beyond their reach; but the instinct of 
self-preservation disposes ns to exaggerate 
every evil which affects ns in the present. 
What a happy thing, too, is it that memory 
prefers to treasure up only good! Is it not a 
trace of the divine nature yet lingering in the 
soul, burying evil in forgetfulness and hold- 
ing only to the good? Let us not be de- 
ceived; the past had its evils which are out of 
sight, the present has more of good perhaps 
than we are prepared to see. 

3. The correctness of those views will the 
more clearly appear if we consider that for 
several reasons we almost necessarily give a 
disportionately large share of attention to 
present ills as compared with those that are 
past, while the reverse takes place with re- 
gard to whatever is good. A natural and 
often unconscious selfishness leads us to 
magnify the faults and vices of our cotem- 
poraries; while personal rivalries, jealousies, 
and hates too frequently disqualify us for 



FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 157 

forming a correct estimate of their virtues. 
Perfect impartiality is scarcely to be expected, 
however honestly aimed at by an interested 
party. Besides, our very nearness to the evils 
about us, by a well-known law of physical 
optics, not inapplicable to moral vision, ren- 
ders it impossible that present ills should not 
occupy an uiiduly large part of our field of 
view, when compared with those of the dis- 
tant past. A man's hand laid over his eyes 
shuts out the world. It may be asked: Does 
not the same law apply to our estimate of the 
favorable aspects of past and present, and will 
not the one error counterbalance the other? 
We answer negatively, since the dangerous- 
ness of the present evils must, for the time, 
distract our attention from all other objects 
of thought. A single source of imminent evil, 
however small, effectually i:)revents, while it 
occupies the mind, all consideration of a hun- 
dred sources of greater good. A violent 
storm of an hour's duration attracts more at- 
tention and leaves a more profound impres- 
sion upon the minds of a community than a 



158 FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 

score of serene and sunshiny clays. A single 
riot is more noticed than the preaching of a 
hundred st?rmons or the i:)eaceful continu- 
ance of civil government for a twelvemonth. 
Self-preservation, or the shunning of all evil, 
is the strongest instinct of liunianity. Hence 
the evils which affect i(s noir are thought 
greater than all others. 

4. That good men should find themselves 
often regretting the backwaid moral tenden- 
cies of the world is not surprising. Wicked 
men have no idea of sin except such as is 
suggested by its calamitous effects. But 
the Christian, in whose soul the principles 
of the divine nature have been developed, 
feels a constantly increasing sensitiveness 
to the moral turpitude of sin. The illumi- 
nated understanding, the quickened con- 
science, becomes painfully cognizant of what- 
ever is inconsistent with the divine will. 
The more we become like God, the more 
keenly alive are we to all ungodliness. The 
world seems to be growing worse, because we 
are growing better; the regions around aio- 



FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 159 

pear darker, bec^iuse the light within us is in- 
creasing. 

It was when Elijah was most zealous for 
God's kingdom that he believed himself to be 
its only surviving representative. His horror 
at the surrounding wickedness blinded him 
to the thousands who had not bowed the knee 
to Baal. 

5. Let us not then infer the moral deteriora- 
tion of the world from our own advancement 
in holiness; for as we grow in grace sin must 
ever continue to appear yet "yet more ex- 
ceeding sinful;" and so the ungodly world 
seems always to be growing worse to those 
who are going on unto perfection. The train 
that is moving more slowly than ours seem to 
us to be moving backward. 

6. But perhaps the saddest of all reasons 
for gloomy views of the i)resent moral state 
and tendency of the world is to be found in 
the backslidden condition of tliose who enter- 
tain these views. How much of the appear- 
ance of any object seen is due to the mind that 
perceives is a (question which philosophers 



inO FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 

fiud not easy to answer. We know that the 
color of any object may be changed by throw- 
ing upon it in succession the different pris- 
matic rays. We know, too, that certain dis- 
eased states of the brain or of the organs of 
vision result in the most absurd and distorted 
perceptions of sight. Tlie notion we form of 
the moral state of society is perhaps ([uite as 
niurh dependent upon the condition of our 
own hearts as the appearance of physical 
things is upon tlif (juality of the light or upon 
the condition of our visual organs. To the 
mourning spirit every object is suggestive of 
sadness, even the very same which to the 
clu'i'rful heart is a minister of gladness. The 
soul that has lost the joys of former days sees 
all things through a tear-dimmed eye, som- 
bereil by the shadow which itself has cast. 

Seltishness, too, powerfully aids the decep- 
tion. Men are loath to believe others gener- 
ally better tlian themselves. When a soul 
has wandered from the light of God's coun- 
tenance and walks amid the fogs of doubt and 
unbelief, it sees all men enveloped in the in- 



FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 161 

siguia of its own iiufaitlifulness. Whoever 
knew one who had lost the joys of the great 
salvation that did not think that the Cliurch 
and all the appliances and evidences of grace 
had manifestly deteriorated within the period 
of his remembrance? 

We read of one in olden times whose feet 
were almost gone, whose steps had well-nigh 
slipped, and who had rashly concluded that 
the righteous have no advantage over the 
wicked, and that it is a vain thing to serve 
God. In the blindness of his mind he had 
begun to envy the apparent prosperity of the 
wicked. Having lost his own faith, he at once 
imagined all faith to be vain. But wdien he 
went to the sanctuary and studied God's truth 
in the light of his providence, he was over- 
whelmed with a sense of the folly of his rea- 
soning and the wickedness of his thoughts. 

It is a fortunate thing that all men are never 
sick at once, and we should beware of infer- 
ring the moral state of the world from the un- 
healthy, backslidden condition of individual 

souls. 

11 



102 FORMEK DAYS AND THESE. 

7. But finally, the i)ievaleiicy of the idea 
that the days of our early remembrance were 
better than these is attributable, more than to 
any other single cause, to the permanency of 
early impressions. There is a mysterious 
beauty in the relative states and o])erations of 
th(^ mind at ditVi-rcnt p<'riods <»!' life. The in- 
timate conin'ction Ix'twtM'n th«' mental states 
of ehildluMul and old ai;e is one of the most 
curious facts of our earthly existence. It is 
at once interestini^: and wonderful to see the 
resurrection in the minds of the aged of the 
long-dormant impressions of early childhood. 
Our lives seem naturally divisible into three 
great periods: the j)eriod of feeling, thei)eriod 
of action, and the period of reflection or ret- 
rospection. As age advances the mind seems 
to look farther back into its early history, as 
if its final operations were but an unwinding 
of the thread of thought, and living child- 
hood over again; or, as if life under some un- 
seen power first flowed so far forth and then 
ebbed back to its starting-point. Hence it is 
that the aged are never in })erfect sympathy 



FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 163 

with current events, but are perj^etually dwell- 
ing in the past. 

"Still o'er those scenes their nieiuory wakes, 
And fondly l>roo(ls with niiscr care; 
Time ])ut tlu^ impression stronger makes, 
As streams their channels deeper wear." 

Fortunately for the young and for the aged 
too, the mind's first impressions of its eartiily 
home are of the most favorable character. 
To those just entering it, the world is full of 
beauty. To the young the sunshine is 
brighter, the breeze more delightful, the 
water more refreshing, fruits more delicious, 
and all scenery more delectable than to the 
old. To them all things wear the charm of 
novelty. With eager curiosity they go forth 
into life, their minds being rendered pecul- 
iarly receptive by the absence of all i)re- 
occupying thoughts and anxious cares. With 
fervent and untutored imagination they ex- 
aggerate every object, viewing all things as 
colored by a glowing fancy and magnified by 
contrast with the diniinutiveness of the be- 
holder. Seeking happiness with an instinct 



1G4 FOKMEK DAYS AND THESE. 

as iiiierriiig as that wliicli guides the butterfly 
to the sweets of the new-blown flower, they 
see and hear and taste all things beautiful 
and delightful. They neither know nor de- 
sire to know of the evils of life. It is only 
the exi)erience of after-years that teaches 
tlu'in that many of the flowers that c-liarniiMl 
their childhood were poisonous; tliat serpents 
often lie conceahnl beneath the fairest bowers; 
that our dearest friendships are of siiort du- 
ration and sometimes insincere; tluit lal)or 
and disappointment are tlu* lot of all; that 
losses and diseases are inevitable attendants 
of life; and tliat death ])ursues us through 
every period of our earthly career with a 
thousand executioners, infallibly sure by one 
means or anotlu'r to arrest us at last and hurry 
us away from all we here have loved. Those 
who judge the world by the impressions re- 
ceived in childhood always judge it amiss. 

Comparing things seen through youth's ad- 
miring eyes ^\ith things as viewed through 
the penetrating visi(ni of schooled, suspicious 
and often embittered age, it is not strange tha 



FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 165 

tliey should find their preference all in favor 
of the former days. The world was never so 
good as we once fancied it to be; it is better 
now than oar chafed spirits are willing to ad- 
mit. 

Cliildren are just as happy now as their 
grandparents were in their childhood seventy 
years ago. The world does not grow worse, 
though men grow old. The living majority is 
always young. No, we do not inquire wisely 
concerning this. God is better than oui- 
thoughts, and his kingdom is not failing. 

Christians ripen in grace UKn-e rai)idly than 
the world around them. Their moral prog- 
ress is more speedy. Hence they become dis- 
couraged when viewing the apparently slow 
(and seemingly backward) moral moveiiKMit 
of tlie ages. 

Jacob's reply to IMiaraoh is characteristic 
of the aged: "Few and evil liave the days of 
tlie years of iny life been, and have not at- 
tained unto the days of the years of the life of 
my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage." 
Not Benjamin alive nor all the glory of 



16G FOllMER DAYS AND THESE. 

Joseph in Egypt could oven for a nioinent 
suspciid Ja('()l)'s liabit of dwclliiiL;- upon the 
sorrows of his life. The absence of his be- 
loved boys had burned lines of grief into his 
soul so deep that no present joy, however 
great, couhl suddenly obliterati> thcni. 

The liabit of looking only into the past for 
models of perfection was tlie natural result of 
all efforts at improvement on the part of men 
to whom the future was wholly unrevealed. 
Heuce the heathen statesmen, ))lii!osopher8, 
and ])oets exhausted their skill in depicting 
the excelh»nces of the primitive times, which 
they su])posed to be in exact proportion to 
their remoteness, so that the earliest period 
Could only be fitly represented as the t/oldm 
(h/c of the world. From that blissful state 
the world seemed to them to have })erpetually 
declined by the gradual loss of every element 
of happiness. This heathenish idea has 
doubtless had mueh influence in producing a 
very general tendency in modern minds to 
exaggerate every desirable characteristic of 
the past, and to disparage every claim of ex- 



FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 167 

cellence on the part of the present. Chris- 
tianity first undertook to teach mankind that 
into the future, and not into the past, they 
shouki look for the highest types of perfection. 
Yet many fail to appreciate her doctrine and 
spend much time in vain regrets that the 
present is not as the past was, and in fruit- 
less endeavors to recall the irrevocable, and 
live over the lives of their grandparents. 
The times have changed, and we have changed 
with them. We are not, and should not be, 
precisely what our ancestors were. It may 
be profitable to review the errors of the past, 
that we may avoid them; but to undertake or 
desire to repeat the history of the past is 
sheer folly. The world can not elevate and 
redeem itself by repeating its own history, 
Increasing age and experience reveal to men 
the existence of internal as well as external 
sources of evil of which they had no concep- 
tion in early life; hence they sigh most nat- 
urally for the innocence of childhood. Con- 
scious of the disease and ignorant alike of its 
cause and of its remedy, the restless spirit 



168 FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 

seeks relief in the ljapj[)y remembrance of the 
innocence and peace of bygone earlier days. 

That vain regrets for departed blessings and 
futile attempts to restore the world to tlie 
fancied status of some former period should 
have been per])etually repeated from age to 
age by men destitute of divine revelation is 
no surprising thing. The future being to 
tliem a dread obscurity, they could look only 
into tlie j)ast for criteria by wliic-li to estimate 
tlie present. Ihit for men accepting as in- 
si)ired a book whose autlior saw and declared 
the future as clearly as the ])ast, and whose 
pages are burdened with piomises of things 
to come more glorious in all icspects than the 
past has ever known, such idolatry of the past 
is as inconsistent with sound wisdom as it is 
with saving faith. We have no evidence that 
men were ever better satisfied with their sur- 
roundings than are the men of the ])resent 
generation. Every past age was to those wdio 
lived in it a present j)eriod and no more sat- 
isfactory to them than our times are to us. 
The men of every i)ast generation lived and 



FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 169 

died regretting the unlikeness of their times 
to the former times. The Christian revela- 
tion, on the contrary, abounds with promises 
of future good. No state of personal or of 
social life was ever so greatly blessed that 
its successor was not legitimately expected 
to surpass it. The world's advancement in 
all real good is to be accomplished not by a 
repetition of its own history, but by a per- 
petual approach to a state whose ideal is re- 
vealed only from heaven. The model is ever 
above and before us. 

The New Jerusalem is to come down from 
God out of heaven. The angel's exhortation 
to Lot, 'J Look not behind thee," embodies 
the sentiment of heaven's instruction to the 
men of every age. AVe are to "forget the 
steps already trod and onward urge our way." 
We are not to think of returning to Egypt, 
as did s(mie (and were not they the proto- 
types of our modern eulogizers of the past?) 
whose souls were married to memories of its 
flesh-pots, but we are to look only to the un- 
imagined delights of Canaan before us. 



170 FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 

Does the kingdom of heaven among men 
seem to any to l)e waning? Let them re- 
member that the stone which was cut out of 
the mountain without hands fiUed the whole 
earth, and that the promises of God are as 
sure as his power can make them. Though 
" I visit their transgressions with the rod, and 
their iniquity with stripes, neverthek^ss my 
h)ving-kin(lness will I not utterly take from 
liiui, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail." (Ps. 
Ixxxix. 32, 33.) 

" In the days of these kings shall the God 
of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never 
be destroyed. . . . It shall stand forever." "Of 
the increase of his government and peace tliere 
shall be no end." Surely, if these predictions 
and promises are true and faithful, there can 
be no absolute deterioration in the world's 
moral state. Surely they are mistaken who 
suppose the world is growing worse, for some 
in every preceding age thought the same, and 
if they thought truly, then is the world nearer 
perdition now than ever before. But God, 
who is the strength of our hearts and our por- 



FOBMER DAYS AND THESE. 171 

tiou forever, has assured us of better things. 
" Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge 
shall be increased." " The earth shall be full 
of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters 
cover the sea." " The kingdoms of this world 
are to become the kingdoms of our Lord, and 
of his Christ; and he shall reign forever and 
ever." "New Jerusalem shall come down 
from God out of heaven" — "the tabernacle 
of God is with men, and he will dwell with 
them, and they shall be his people, and God 
himself shall be with them, and be their God." 
*'Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither 
have entered into the heart of man, the things 
which God hath prepared for them that love 
him." '' It doth not yet appear what we shall 
be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we 
shall be like him ; for we shall see him as he is." 

"O'er the gloomy hills of darkness 
Look, my soul, be still and gaze; 
All the promises do travail 

With a glorious day of grace." 

Are there, indeed, no visible proofs in the 
current history of our race that the world, in 



172 FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 

spite of all the powers of darkness, is really 
advancing in all wisdom, grace, and goodness? 
Are there there no indications that the doc- 
trines of heavenly truth are pervading the na- 
tions and leavening the whole world? If the 
promises are being fulfilled, the signs of ful- 
filment will not be wanting. Even a cursory 
survey of the Christian world does not fail to 
present to the appreciative eye njost gratify- 
ing tokens of moral progress. If outward and 
visible fruits are to ])e iaken as any indication 
of the inward and spiritual state, the present 
age has no cause to shrink from comparis(jn 
with any of its X)redecessors. In all those char- 
ities which are the offspring of genuine benevo- 
lence and the exh ibi t ions of that self-sacrificing 
love of our neighbor which Ciiristianity alone 
inspires, no age of the world has surpassed or 
even equaled the present. Large sums of both 
public and private funds are annually expend- 
ed in the erection and maintenance of hospi- 
tals for the relief of the afflicted poor. Com- 
fortably housed and tenderly nursed, thousands 
of the poor are soothed in spirit and healed of 



FOBMER DAYS AND THESE. 173 

disease by the kindly ministry of sympathi- 
zing Christians. Everywhere over the ever- 
widening domain of Christian civilization 
asylums, built and sustained at a cost of 
millions of money, stand as monuments of the 
liberality of Christians in providing for the 
relief and comfort of the insane, the blind, the 
deaf and dumb, and the orphan. Hundreds 
of thousands of dollars are annually expended 
in the publication and gratuitous distribution 
of religious literature with the sole view of 
extending the Eedeemer's kingdom, while a 
number of societies organized for the especial 
purpose of printing and circulating the Bible 
are flooding the nations with the Word of God. 
In the establishment and endowment of 
schools and colleges increasing millions are 
every year bestowed in pure good will to men. 
Churches are being erected in the United 
States alone with such rapidity that each rev- 
olution of the earth presents complete and 
dedicated to God more than one on which the 
sun never shone before. These represent con- 
tributions of millions of dollars to the cause 



17-1 FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 

of God. Ill this country alone not less than 
sixty thousand men are exclusively engaged 
in preaching the gospel, supported at an an- 
nual exi)ense of not less than thirty millions 
of dollars. 

The Sunday-school lias grown to be a mighty 
power, and, tliough using less money than 
many other agencies, accomplishes an amount 
of good which is incalculabU\ AVithouta dol- 
lar paid for salaries she employs more than a 
million of teachers and instruct many millions 
of cliihlri'ii and oldrr i)eople, and furnishes 
for their reading a great variety of excellent 
literature. Perhaps no agency bestows so 
much labor without monetary consideration as 
the Sunday-school. 

Missionaries have gone into all the world, 
and, armed with the sword of the Spirit, are 
pressing the battle against ignorance and sin. 
They have only to be supported by the prayers 
and the money of Christendom, and we shall 
see the heathen become Christ's inheritance 
and the uttermost parts of the earth his pos- 
session. Murders, lynchings, and other hor- 



FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 175 

rible crimes, still prevalent in Christian lands, 
do but indicate the intensification of the con- 
flict between good and evil. Devils protested 
against the i:»ersonal presence and power of 
Christ, and are still most signally manifest 
where the powers of good are strongest. 
Christ subdued and cast them out, and his 
word and Spirit shall still prevail to the final 
exorcism of devils from the hearts of men. 

The missionary operations of the Christian 
world are so extensive and rapidly increasing 
that it is (juite impossible to estimate their 
annual expenditures or achievements. Sure- 
ly not less than 5,000 foreign missionaries 
are in the employ of the various branches of 
the Protestant Church in the world, exclusive 
of more than 10,000 native teachers and help- 
ers in the different fields, who are supported 
at a yearly outlay of not much under 5^10,000,- 
000. 

Of private and unrecorded Christian chari- 
ties, known only to the giver, the receiver, 
and to God, eternity alone may reveal the un- 
counted millions bestowed and the blessed 



17G FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 

fruits which they will have produced. Such 
are a few of the more obvious and easily 
estimated, but by no means the highest, 
evidences of the progress of Christianity. 
Though founded on a basis of numerical 
and pecuniary calculation, they are none the 
less certain and satisfactory indications of 
the hold which religion has taken upon the 
hearts and i)urses of mankind, and are all the 
better adapted to this age when "money an- 
sweroth all things " and even piety is most 
effectually expressed and most readily esti- 
mated by a pecuniary standard. These re- 
sults show what is in men's hearts. The 
above-stated estimates show, too, not* only the 
present state, but the rapid growth of Chris- 
tianity, since the quantities they represent 
have increased tenfold in the last hundred 
years and fivefold at least in the last half- 
century. Can any, in view of these facts, sup- 
pose for a momt'ut that real love of God and 
man is waning in the earth? Nay, the king- 
dom which was at first as a mustard-seed is 
spreading in spite of all opi^osition in many 



FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 177 

hearts and among all nations. It will fill the 
whole earth. The winding stream may in 
places seem to be flowing back toward its 
source, yet its real course is ever forward. 
So the onward march of Christ's kingdom 
may be checked or delayed, but is never re- 
versed. Each age doubtless has its predomi- 
nant vices, yet each has also its prevailing 
virtues, and virtue is ever the stronger in the 
end. 

Then, friend, if your heart be in heaviness 
through manifold temptations, if the present 
look not so fair as the historic pictures of the 
past, if present experiences be not so happy 
as the sweet remembrances of youth, if the 
signs of promise be hid for a time from your 
eyes, spread not the veil of your despondency 
over the hopeful visions of the generations 
that are to follow you. Let not son or 
daughter hear words of faithless despondency 
from you. Blight not the energizing hopes 
of youth by distorted and embittered views of 
life. God's bow has not yet failed from the 

clouds, nor have the blessings of which it is 
12 



178 FORMER DAYS AND THESE. 

the pledge been withheld or diminished. If 
your increasing meetness for heaven lessen 
your appreciation of earthly good, take not 
away the signs of promise and the grounds of 
hope from those who are engaged in the 
mighty struggle to restore all things unto the 
heavenly pattern. "Say not, AVhat is the 
cause that the former days were better than 
these? for thou dost not inquire wisely con- 
cerning this." 



IF WE KNEW EACH OTHER BETTER. 

Our frail and erring brotlier 

Is much the same as we, 
And oft his hard surroundings 

Have made him what we see. 
Perhaps he sees our failings, 

And counts them by the score. 
If we knew each other better, 

We would love each other more. 

Could we know Iiis cranial structure, 

And feel his nervous strain. 
The divinely fixed machinery 

Of hereditary brain. 
AVe'd feel a thrill of mercy 

We never felt before ; 
When we know our brother bett(T, 

We shall love our brother more. 

When malice, hate, and vengeance 

Enrage the souls of men. 
How nation against nation 

Hurls murderous missiles then! 
Then ignorance of our brother 

Floods land and sea with gore; 
When we know our neighbor better, 

We shall fight and slay no more. 



180 IF WE KNEW EACH OTHER BETTER. 

North and South knew not each other 

Nor what tliey fought about; 
Each saw the devil in his brother 

And thought to knock him out. 
Tlie devil's transmigrated, 

And laughed to see men fall; 
Had these brethren known each other, 

They had never fought at all. 



MONEY. 

Few subjects connected with human his- 
tory are of more curious interest than that of 
money. Before discussing the dollar, which 
is our specific form of money, let us inquire 
somewhat into the nature, history, and func- 
tions of money in general. 

The word "money " is derived from the Latin 
Moncta, a surname of Juno, in whose temple 
at Rome money was coined. Money is his- 
torically anything used in trade as a substi- 
tute for commodities. Men everywhere and 
always desire to exchange the products of 
their own labor for those of others. When 
one product is exchanged directly for another 
product the transaction is called barter. 
This method of exchange being found in 
many instances inconvenient or impracticable, 
men in all nations, from the earliest times, 
learned to employ substitutes for commodi- 



182 MONEY. 

ties, to avoid the cumbersomeness of exchange 
ill kind. Different things have been used in 
different ages and countries for this purpose. 
The American Indians used uanipum, or 
shells strung and woven into belts and neck- 
laces, some being white, the real wampum, 
and others dark or black. Our forefathers 
used leaden bullets; others have used nails, 
rings of co{)per, (juills of salt or of gold-dust, 
shovel blades, and many other things, all of 
which seemed to possess some intrinsic value 
either for use or ornament. Lycurgus used 
iron for money in order to discourage extrav- 
agance among his people, although silver and 
gold had long been in use in buying and sell- 
ing. He believed that so coarse and heavy a 
metal as iron could not be handled in sulii- 
cient (juantities to i)urcliase many luxuries. 
Tlie liomans used sheep and cattle as media 
of exchange, hence our word " pecuniary," 
from the Latin jtrrun, a "herd." 

While an indetinite variety of things have 
been made to serve the i)lace of money, gold 
and silver were certainly among the earliest 



MONEY. 183 

and have been by far the most extensively 
employed as money. Every civilized nation 
now nses them, and few, if any, barbarous 
ones are without them. Perhaps the first 
recorded instance of sale and purchase for 
money is that of Abraham buying a piece of 
ground for a burying-place, and weighing out 
the silver to pay for it. 

Money may be defined as that which at any 
time and place all men agree to take in ex- 
change for whatever they have to sell. It is 
virtually an order, endorsed by mankind, and 
of universal acceptance for every transferable 
power and possession of man. While many 
exchanges are made in kind and many com- 
mercial transactions are made by checks, or- 
ders, and other substitutes for money, yet 
none of these can supersede the necessity for 
the precious metals in the business of the 
world as a means of final payment. Money is 
to commerce what tools are to mechanical 
operations. Saws and hammers are scarcely 
more indispensable to the mechanic than is 
money in some form to the tradesman. 



184 MONEY. 

Wliy any particular thing should be adopted 
to represent all others is a very interesting 
question, which takes specific form when we 
inquire why silver and gold have been so uni- 
versally adopted for this purpose, and are 
therefore called the precious metals. We 
know that neither of these metals is so useful 
as iron, yet each of them is many times more 
valuable in men's estimation. Their values 
arise largely from their use as money, as may 
be seen in the case of silver when its disuse 
for that purpose is threatened. For physical 
reasons it is very desirable that whatever is to 
measure all other values should itself possess 
much value in small compass. Money is not 
only exceedingly useful when exchanged for 
other things, but its terms and values are al- 
most indispensable in measuring the values of 
articles to be exchanged in kind. One might 
be no little perplexed in exchanging horses of 
different qualities for land of varying fertility, 
unless he had some common measure of value 
to apply to each. Twenty-five horses, aver- 
aged at a value of sixty dollars each, would 



MONEY. 185 

purchase one hundred acres of land averaged 
at fifteen dollars an acre. None but ideal 
dollars enter into this transaction, but he who 
fails to note that the ideal dollar is of very 
great importance has no adequate ideas on 
the subject of money. 

As one of the chief functions of money is to 
measure and to transfer values, it may be well 
to define value, and especially to distinguish 
it from utility, with which many confound it. 
They are by no means the same, nor are they 
in proportion to each other in cases where 
they coexist. Many useful things have no 
value, and some valuable things have little 
utility. Air is useful, but not valuable, while 
diamonds have high value but are of little 
use. Value is simply purchasing power. 
Perry says: "Value is the relation of mutual 
purchase established between two commod- 
ities by their exchange." 

Money is a representive of all values, and 
may be said to hold them in imperishable form. 
The value of the muscular power in a laborer's 
arm at any given moment, if not then exerted. 



186 MONEY. 

is lost forever, while the shekels that Abraham 
paid his servants for a day's labor would com- 
mand a day's labor still, if they were now in 
hand. One dollar may be made to pay a mil- 
lion of dollars of debts, if it be used often 
enough. 

How does money originate ? Is it a discov- 
ery or an invention, or is it the creature of 
the government, a thing that lives by statute 
law? Here we have a very broad and intri- 
cate question, which we shall not fully dis- 
cuss. It is^enough for our present purpose to 
say that the general agreement of mankind 
from immemorial time to use silver and gold 
as money, giving and receiving them in ex- 
change for all transferable values, seems al- 
most to demonstrate a providential design that 
they should be so used. It should not be 
overlooked that each of these metals has a val- 
ue which is entirely independent of its use as 
money. Both w^ould be extensively used if 
they were never coined as money. Just what 
part of their |jresent values is due to the fact 
that they are used as money is an interesting 



MONEY. 187 

question which it would be impossible to an- 
swer. 

One of the most important inquiries con- 
nected with this whole matter of money is 
whether it is best to use one metal or two as 
money; and if two, what should be the rela- 
tive values of the two. The world is now 
mightily exercised on these questions, and 
very much of the stability of commerce and 
of the prosperity of nations depends upon 
their proper solution. An able writer has said: 
" In its theoretic or economic respects money 
presents a field of apparently hopeless discord, 
controversy, and confusion, without a single 
doctrine established as a principle of univer- 
sal or even of general acceptance." Some 
think that this is a question to be decided 
solely by legislation. They think that the 
government has power to create money, and 
that it should simply declare its will and set- 
tle the matter forever. 

Doubtless the functions of government are 
of the highest importance in connection with 
this great question, but no government can 



188 MONEY. 

create money. Congress may do much to reg- 
ulate currency, but it can not make money. 
If Congress should authorize the stamping of 
oak chips or leather buttons as money, would 
that make them money? If the government 
should stamp a piece of silver of the size of our 
dime with the words, one dollar, would it pass 
for one dollar? And could Congress make such 
money a legal tender if it should try? Na- 
tions may weigh and stamp or coin gold and 
silver, metals already in use, as money, but 
no nation on earth has the power to endow 
any metal or other material with the func- 
tions of money at its pleasure. As a matter 
of fact, every nation in the world uses gold 
for its chief currency, except Bolivia, Peru, 
and a few^ of the smaller South American 
republics; while every nation uses silver for 
coins of smaller value. Silver is too bulky 
and heavy to be handled in large amounts; 
gold is far more convenient, and therefore 
passes at about the same value among all 
nations. A Mexican gold dollar is worth 
about a dollar in the United States, but a Mex- 



MONEY. 



189 



ican silver dollar passes for less than seventy- 
five cents, though it contains more pure silver 
than our dollar. This arises from the fact 
that silver bullion has fallen in the markets 
of the world, and our silver dollar is held 
above its real value by law. 

The relative values of silver and gold have 
varied in past ages, as- the following table will 
show; gold rising from nine to sixteen times 
the value of an equal weight of silver. , 

Ratio of Value of Silver to Gold. 
At Rome about the Christian era, 
In England, mint price A.D. lo44, 



era, 


1 to 


9 


1344, 


1 *' 


12.475 


1509, 


1 " 


11.400 


1600, 


1 " 


11.100 


1717, 


1 " 


15.209 


1816, 


1 " 


15.209 


1863, 


1 '' 


15.069 


1893, 


1 " 


16 




Gold. Silver. 



In America 



Relative production in 1800 in ounces, 1 to 42 
" 18()3 " 1 " 63 

In London during a crisis in 1847 no gold at 
all could be raised on £60,000 of silver; dur- 
inir a similar crisis in Calcutta in 1804 it was 



190 MONEY. 

impossible to raise a single rupee of silver on 
£20,000 of gold, gold not being a legal tender. 
In recent days silver bullion has depreciated 
in the market's of the world till it can be 
bought for a little more than half its former 
price. 

Whatever may constitute a currency, it is 
of the utmost practical importance that it be 
uniform and not fluctuating in quantity nor 
in value. It is the duty of tlie government to 
coiiJ mcmey in order to secure a uniformity in 
size and purity of coins and to prevent frauds. 
If two metals are used as currency, a great dif- 
ficulty arises in keeping them at par with 
each otlier; indeed, it would be best to have 
the kind of currency in which a debt is to be 
paid specified in the contract. In the marts 
of trade dollars of different values would de- 
stroy confidence and obstruct commerce, and 
would be as the divers weights and divers bal- 
ances which are declared by Solomon to be an 
abomination to the Lord. Those values which 
are to measure all other values should fluctu- 
ate as little as possible. 



MONEY. 191 

If money is appreciating in value, the cred- 
itor class are growing rich at the expense of 
the debtor; if money is depreciating, the debt- 
or class is growing rich at the expense of the 
creditor. If two grades of money are in use 
at the same time, the inferior will invariably 
drive out the superior, since every one will 
buy goods and pay debts with the cheapest 
money that will pass. The government does 
not confer value upon money, but its jjower 
to decide what shall be legal tender may 
enable it to float unworthy money for a time. 
Should the government make other than real 
values a legal tender for debts, it would simply 
outrage and rob the people and stop all trade. 
All values grow out of the desires of men, and 
no law can create or increase men's desires. 
The government can give neither value nor 
price to commodities, and money is not an 
exception to this rule. Fiat money would 
prove to be a fraudulent delusion and prac- 
tical impossibility. To authorize the pay- 
ment for debts in it wouki be equivalent to 
the confiscation of property; to receive it in 



192 MONEY. 

payment of taxes would speedily bankrupt 
the government. Governments adopt money 
which existed before they did. No govern- 
ment now in existence is as old as the pur- 
chasing power of gold and silver. 

The unit of the money of the United States 
is the dollar. The word is of German origin, 
thidevy the coins having been first struck off 
in St. Joachim's valley or thai, in about the 
year 1518. It is not accurate to say that one 
hundred cents make a dollar; rather we should 
say that one dollar contains a hundred cents. 
The dollar is the unit, existing first in fact and 
in thought, and cents are fractions of it. Our 
silver dollar contains 371.25 grains of pure 
silver and 41.25 grains of alloy, making it 
weigh 412.5 grains. Our gold dollar con- 
tains 23.22 grains of gold and 2.58 grains of 
alloy, making it weigh 25.8 grains, nine- 
tenths pure gold. English coined gold is 
jA pure and their silver \l pure. Previous to 
1834 our gold coins contained 27 grains of 
gold to the dollar. The gold dollar is too 
small for convenient use, and is no longer 



MONEY. 193^ 

coined. Oar silver dollar was first coined 
about the year 1790. The pound sterling, or 
easterling as frora the east, was originally 
and up to 1300 A.D. a pound Troy of silver, 
11 ounces and 2 pennyweights pure and 18 
pennyweights alloy. So the pound of money 
was a pound in weight. Now the pound in 
weight of silver makes 3£ 6s. of sterling 
money in the British Empire. 

It is a common delusion with writers on 
money that the labor required to produce it 
is the source of its value. An encyclopedia 
says that "money has value put into it by 
costing labor and skill in bringing it into ex- 
istence." This is an error. It hi true that 
value is often in proportion to the cost of pro- 
duction, but the bestowment of labor can not 
confer value. A man might spend a lifetime 
of labor in carving an image out of a moun- 
tain which would have no value when he had 
finished it; while another might, without any 
labor at all, pick up a diamond worth thou- 
sands of dollars. Value springs from human 

desire and fluctuates with supply and demand. 
13 



194 MONEY. 

Nor is utility the same as value. Water and 
air are useful, but valueless, the supply is 
free. A thing does not sell because men be- 
stow labor on it, but because men want it and 
.can not get it without buying it. 

The fact that a metal is used as money cer- 
tainly adds much to its value, since it may 
thus gratify a greatly enlarged sphere of de- 
sires; and the more extensively and thor- 
oughly a metal answers this purpose, the 
more desirable it becomes for currency. If 
no government has power to fix the value of 
either gold or silver as related to commodities 
in general, then certainly none has power to 
fix their values in relation to each other. 
For a government to propose to change all 
the silver that may be brought to its mints 
into dollars of a given value in relation to 
gold would be perilous indeed. It would be 
equivalent to an offer to raise the price of all 
the silver bullion in the world to a par with 
gold as a ratio fixed by itself. Now, if a gov- 
ernment can arbitrarily fix one ratio, why not 
another? If the Conorress should enact that 



MONEY. 195 

an ounce of gold shall be worth one hundred 
ounces of silver, could it make it so? The 
truth is, that the government, as a coiner of 
money, has nothing to do v^ith fixing its value, 
but simply guarantees quantity and quality, 
the weight and the fineness of coins. Trade 
alone fixes values or fluctuates them (for they 
are never fixed), and it is only in the marts of 
trade that governments are mighty factors in 
fixing values. In collecting and disbursing 
taxes they largely influence prices and values. 
But should a government receive for taxes 
anything not current as money in the com- 
mercial world^ it would stultify itself and ruin 
its credit. Our government did not originate 
our mone}'; it simply adopted the Spanish sil- 
ver dollar then in circulation, ordered similar 
ones to be coined, and adopted gold and silver 
for currency, as other nations had done from 
time immortal. 

How much currency a nation needs we will 
not now discuss. Most enlightened nations 
seem to prosper best when the currency is 
from fifteen to thirty dollars for every inhab- 



196 MONEY. 

itant. It must be borne in mind, however, that 
the amount of trade is by no means limited to 
the volume of the currency. A very large 
majority of the trade of the world is carried 
on by means of bank-notes, checks, drafts 
(representative money), exchange of com- 
modities, and balancing of accounts. Money 
seems to be needed chiefly to pay balances in 
trade between nations or individuals. 

While, as we have said, all nations use gold 
for coins of larger value, no nation can dis- 
pense with silver for smaller currency. There 
seems to be an almost natural adaptation be- 
tween the size, weight, and value of a silver 
dollar and an ordinary day's work. Perhaps 
eight-tenths of the cash transactions of the 
world involve not more than the value of a 
dollar. For all these gold is wholly unsuit- 
able. Silver is for several reasons the best 
currency for such trade. It is durable, bright, 
too bulky to hoard, and too heavy to carry on 
the person in large quantities, easily coined, 
and has a musical ring. It goes and iDroves 
itself current by running. It would be a 



I 



MONEY. 



197 



curious thing to trace the movements of some 
silver dollars for a year or even for a month. 
Probably one often does more purchasing or 
paying in a year than a thousand dollars of 
gold. Is not gold a lazy king, who has of late 
been growing fat by lying still? When men 
can make a better interest by investing their 
gold than by hoarding it, they will use it. 

Good and lasting security and sure and 
large profits promote investments and enliven 
trade. In general, a depreciating currency 
promotes trade, since no man wishes to hold 
that which is growing less in his hands; while 
an appreciating currency checks investments 
and restricts trade, since men naturally hold 
to that which will be worth more to-morrow 
than it is to-day, and avoid contracting debts 
which must be paid in a currency whose cost 
is constantly increasing. Kence, when money 
is rising (in value) times are hard; when it is 
falling, times are easy; if it is falling fast, 
money will be plenty and times flush. Gold 
is now too precious to constitute the best cur- 
rency—that is, it has too much purchasing 



198 MONEY. 

power, while silver has too little. If the two 
could be tied together, or every debt be made 
payable one-half in silver and the other in 
gold, each metal being estimated by its price 
in the open marts of the world, a happy me- 
dium of trade would probably be found. 

Much has been written and much learned 
about political economy, while but little is 
taught in books or in schools about personal 
economy — that is, the management of one's 
own finances. Indeed, it is not exaggeration 
to say that there are men who know enough 
about political economy to manage the ex- 
chequer of a nation, who yet can not manage 
their own personal expenses so as to "make 
ends meet " at home. 

If w^e except sin and disease, there are per- 
haps no greater causes of unhappiness among 
men than poverty and debt. How to avoid 
these is a question of prime importance. Let 
every youth be taught how to earn a dollar 
and how to keep it till he has earned another, 
and not to spend more than one of these till 
he has earned two more, and never to go in 



MONEY. - 199 

debt. This rule will prevent poverty and lead 
to any degree of j)ecuniary abundance. Very 
many seem never to have learned that the sav- 
ing of money is sim^^ly the storing away of 
tlie fruits of one's labor for future use, which 
must be done if we would avoid dependence 
upon the uncertainties of daily wages. The- 
making and saving of money is largely a. 
habit, which all should form. Among the in- 
spired laws for the guidance of human life 
there is an emphatic doctrine on this subject: 
^' If any provide not for his own, and spe- 
cially for those of his own house, he hath de- 
nied the faith, and is worse than an infidel," 

Wide-spread, thorough, and profound in- 
vestigations of the question of money, as to 
what should constitute the body or the basis 
of currency — whether one of the precious 
metals or both should be taken as the stand- 
ard money, and what should be their relative 
values if both be adopted, have occupied the 
wisest financiers through the ages, and have 
been especially earnest throughout the finan- 
cial world in recent j^ears. The Congress of 



200 MONEY. 

the United States seems to have been almost 
hopelessly perplexed by these difficult prob- 
lems. Ye may we not hope that these labo- 
ious inquiries and extensive disturbances in 
the commercial world will soon result in the 
adoption of the same money by all civilized 
nations, so that the coins of all, silver and 
gold, shall circulate everywhere without dis- 
count, estimated by their weight and fineness 
alone? And will not such unity in the me- 
dium of trade have a powerful tendency to 
unify the nations in spirit? Nations inter- 
locked in commercial and financial interests 
can not afford to fight each other. If God 
works morally through men, and men work 
chiefly through money, then it is through 
money at last that God will transform the 
world. When the money power of the world 
shall have become subservient to Christ's 
kingdom, then shall the " knowledge of the 
Lord" speedily "cover the earth as the waters 
cover the sea." 

A scientific journal recently asked: What 
invention is most needed now to advance the 



MONEY. 201 

civilization of the world? The answer given 
by one was: "A machine for storing without ap- 
preciable loss the electrical force generated by 
waterfalls, streams, tides, and other great na- 
tural dynamic agents." 

Have we not just such an agency for storing 
and holding and transmitting to any desired 
distance, and applying in any desired way, the 
physical, intellectual, and even the moral 
forces of the world? Is there any known 
limit to the power of money? It supports 
thrones, equips and moves armies, measures 
the powers of nations and the extent of their 
dominions, fires brains, prints and distributes 
books, sends the heralds of the cross with the 
gospel to the heathen, and transforms the 
world by the ubiquity of its presence and the 
exhaustless applicabilities of its power. No 
seasons obstruct its movements, no climate af- 
fects its health, no dangers daunt its purjDose. 
Epidemics do not alarm it, contagions do not 
infect it, and quarantines do not exclude it. It 
is everywhere welcomed, whether it come from 
friend or foe. It is the concentrated embodi- 



202 MONEY. 

ment of the magnipotence of man. It is the 
efl&cient ageut in every human achievement, 
but its most admirable form of work is in the 
realization of the benevolent purposes of God 
and man. This is jn-eeminently the age of 
benevolence, when money, the embodiment of 
every form of i^ower, is being employed as never 
before to conquer the forces of evil, and give 
universal reign to truth and righteousness. 

Money not only builds railroads, digs ca- 
nals, sends steamships across the ocean, and 
spans continents with telegraph wires and 
the ocean with submarine cables, but it illu- 
minates the world with the light of electricity 
and with the light of the Word of God. 

How wonderful is the fact that money loses 
none of itself in effecting its immeasurable 
achievements! The identical silver and gold 
which wrought their miracle as money and as 
plate in the erection and ornamentation of 
Solomon's temple may in our day be mightily 
aiding to bring to pass the far greater miracle 
of extending Christ's kingdom to the utter- 
most parts of the earth. 



MONEY. 203 

Money is indeed a thing of Protean forms, 
and undergoes its changes with marvelous 
facility. If money be put into a railroad, from 
the railroad money comes. If money feeds 
intellect, intellect reproduces money. It is 
transformed, but not lost. It is not only 
transformable and transmissible, but like a 
spirit may pass into different bodies, assume 
different shapes, and be transmitted to any 
place with ease. A bank draft weighing less 
than one-sixteenth of an ounce may move 
whole tons of silver or of gold. 

Every power of man's body and of man's 
soul may find its most efficient expression 
through the agency of money. 



AUTUMN 



A RURAL SCENE. 

Since 'tis meet the ripening year 
Should in richer robes appear; 
Autumn's dress takes gorgeous hues 
From the sunshine and the dews. 
While with chemie rays the sun 
Dyes the leaflets one by one, 
Fields and forests gleam and glow, 
One vast panoramic show. 
Poplars clad in green and gold, 
Towering tops like banners hold; 
Sweetgums shine in fiery red, 
The oak too lifts its blazing head. 
See vast forests far and near, 
Changing with the changing year. 
Fields display more brilliant flowers 
Than were theirs in vernal hours: 
Swaying ranks of goldenrod, 
Lengthening plumes conspicuous nod; 
Seas of floral beauties glow 
With more tints than painters know, 
While the varying shades declare 
Hand divine paints everywhere — 
Hues that angels might admire 
Wonder, love, and joy inspire. 

Strolling through these woodland wilds. 
Rapture every sense beguiles. 
Shadows from the sylvan height 



AUTUMN. 205 



Broider far the fields of light, 
Awe pervades the slumbrous air, 
Glory lingers everywhere, 
Silence reigns o'erhushing all, 
Does she hear the leaflets fall? 
how sad, so fair a scene 
May to-morrow but have been! 
For when south wind moistly blows, 
Every leaf its breathing knows ; 
AVon by its mysterious wooing 
Hence ere long they all are going, 
Quitting these enchanting bowers, 
Quivering down in golden showers. 
Late in autumn's frosty days 
Pale wich-hazel's leafless sprays 
From their unpretentious bloom 
Send a rare and rich perfume 
Till the air with fragrance laden 
Soothes like odors fresh from Eden. 
Here I linger hours away, 
Here forget the passing day. 
Ah ! could mortal skill redeem 
Aught from time's resistless stream 
These blest days would I dissever. 
And would make them mine forever. 

II. 

BIRDS IN AUTUMN. 

Once in early autumn days, 
So the beech-tree legend says, 
Robin Redbreast's youngest son 
Died when life had just begun. 
Lost by chance from mother's nest. 
Fate denied him other rest. 
Downy drapery dipped in dew 



206 AUTUMN. 

Chilled the birdling ere he flew. 
Father drooped upon the tree, 
Mother mourned in minor key, 
Birds around in sadness pine, 
Dimly too the sun did shine, 
Falling leaves dropped slowly down, 
Sounds were sad, the earth grew brown, 
Winds sang dirges in the air. 
Gloom was brooding everywhere . 
Sad and rueful was the day 
When young Robin passed away. 
Curling leaf was shroud and grave, 
Drooping branch did o'er him wave. 
Silence reigne.d long time they say, 
On young Robin's burial day. 

Yet the sadness soon was past. 
Sorrow Imt a night did last, 
Sharpest grief takes quickest flight, 
Songs came with the morning light; 
Joy thrilled all the birds again — 
Joy is stronger after pain. 
Hear the mock-bird's autumn lays. 
Mellow as the autumn days. 
Day and night I hear him sing, 
Fresh as in the burst of spring. 
Now, too, hear the flute-toned wren, 
Calling o'er and o'er again, 
Till the silvery notes deploy 
Flinging wide the sounding joy. 
List! the speckle-breasted thrush. 
Creeping through the tangled brush, 
Chatters threats, with baneful eye, 
At the heedless passer-by. 

Now the birds with prudent care 
Store away their winter fare. 



AUTUMN. 207 

For they all appear to feel, 
While yet distant, coming ill. 
And prepare for it betimes. 
Or depart to friendlier climes. 
Nature, too, makes them to know 
Which should stay and which should go. 

Sporting now in airy ocean, 
Swallows whirled in wild commotion, 
Congregate at evening hour, 
Down some chimney-throat to pour. 
Moved by strangest inspiration. 
They prepare for their migration ; 
Seeming every one to know 
Just the time for them to go. 
Thousands upon thousands come, 
Gathering for their journey home. 
Bluebirds, too, go south w^ard now, 
Till the time when farmers plow ; 
Man may hear their concert chime. 
When they start for distant clime. 

Marshaled high in pathless skies. 
Bird to wandering bird replies ; 
Plaintive notes borne through the air. 
As of angel near despair, 
Heard amid our dreamy slumbers, 
Wake us by their mystic numbers. 
Marking tardy hours of night 
Slowdy passed in weary flight — 
Signal -sounds on high to tell 
Heaven and earth that all is well. 

in. 

THE FALLING OF THE LEAVES. 

One by one they lose their hold; 
Some are crimson, some are gold, 



208 AUTUMN. 

Some are pied and some are brown- 
All come circling gently down. 
Quitting shrub and lofty tree, 
Giddy things the leaves must be. 
Wafted through the airy ocean, 
Whirling all in glad commotion, 
Swaying oft with unheard sound, 
Veering coyly to the ground. 

Trembling on the plain below, 
Kissing breezes o'er them blow, 
Soothing the vast company 
With low, rustling harmony. 
Fading each without a sigh, 
Cheery deaths the leaves mu^^t die I 

Covering o'er the hills and dales, 
Tiny plants from frosty gales : 
Comfort they to others give, 
Die that other leaves may live, 
Beautify the mourning earth. 
Give to future glorious birth. 

In autumnal s{»lend«»rs clad. 
Their departing is not sad; 
They {.-ave spring and summer grace. 
They give charm to autumn's face. 

Falling from their stations high, 
Monarchs' crowns beneath us lie; 
Realms bereft and kings made bare. 
Yield the tints that mingle here. 
Mansion hall was never spread 
With such carpet as we tread, 
When the earth herself adorns 
With the trifts of all her sons. 



AUU 5 1«98 



